Standardizing Quality of Virtual Urgent Care: Using Standardized Patients in a Unique Experiential Onboarding...

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Telemedicine
• Quality Improvement

Background:

• Virtual urgent care (VUC) offers real-time medical problem evaluation and treatment.
• Physicians in VUC possess varied telemedicine training, impacting care quality.
• Standardized patients (SPs) can simulate patient encounters for training and assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of a workplace-based onboarding program using SPs in a VUC setting.
• To assess the communication, disease-specific, and telemedicine skills of practicing VUC physicians.
• To identify specific areas for improvement in VUC physician training and performance.

Main Methods:

• A simulated VUC environment was created using mock electronic medical records and SPs integrated into the actual clinic queue.
• SPs evaluated physicians' behaviors using a standardized assessment tool focusing on communication, disease management, and telemedicine skills.
• Physician participants were surveyed to gauge their perception of the training program's impact on their skills.

Main Results:

• Physicians demonstrated strong performance in core communication and disease management (90-95% well-done behaviors).
• Significant gaps were identified in telemedicine-specific skills (55% well-done) and patient education/counseling (32% well-done).
• All participants reported improvements in communication and telemedicine skills post-simulation.

Conclusions:

• Workplace-based onboarding with SPs effectively identifies knowledge gaps in VUC physician training.
• The program highlighted critical needs for enhanced curricula in telemedicine and patient education for virtual care providers.
• This experiential approach provides actionable insights for improving virtual care quality assurance and physician development.