Addressing the Rapidly Increasing Need for Telemedicine Education for Future Physicians

As the COVID-19 pandemic affected the ability to conduct in-person sessions to teach clinical skills, our medical school developed a curriculum to introduce first-year medical students to telemedicine visits, while also reinforcing their history-taking and clinical reasoning skills.

All first-year medical students at Florida Atlantic University went through three sessions on telemedicine that began with a lecture, followed by a standardized patient interaction, then a small group meeting with clinical faculty. We assessed the sessions using survey questions on a 5-point Likert scale and additional narrative feedback. We also assessed students on a telemedicine objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) at the end of the semester and compared results to the previous year's same case done in person.

Students overall found the sessions helpful for refining their history-taking skills and that the knowledge gained would be helpful in their future practices. They felt the online platform was a useful way to interact with patients, but had frustrations with technical difficulties. They also expressed a greater appreciation for the ability to perform an in-person physical examination. Students performed similarly on the OSCE station in person compared to virtual visits (mean score 93% vs 93.75%).

Introducing telemedicine during a first-year medical school clinical skills course provides students with opportunities to refine their clinical skills while introducing a skill that will be commonplace in the postpandemic environment. This curriculum could be adopted not only during a time of necessary distance learning, but also continued as in-person education resumes.