Teaching medical students in general practice when conducting remote consults: a qualitative study

Telehealth involves real-time communication (telephone or video-call) between patients and health providers. The COVID-19 pandemic propelled general practitioners to conduct most consultations remotely, seeing patients face-to-face only when required. Placement opportunities and experience for medical students were reduced. Initially online learning programmes replaced clinical attachments. Subsequently, clinical teachers supervised students to engage in remote consultations, either in clinics or from their homes. This study aimed to explore the experience of New Zealand general practitioners undertaking clinical teaching with medical students when telehealth consulting.

Semi-structured interviews with general practitioners who had taught medical students whilst consulting remotely. General inductive thematic analysis of transcribed interviews.

Six female and four male participants aged 40 to over 65 years. Participants often focused on general practicalities of telehealth consultations and effects on the patient-doctor relationship, and needed direction to consider remote consultations with students, which added to the interactions. Four themes were identified: changes needed in teaching delivery format; direct comparison with face-to-face; challenges and advantages to remote teaching, each with subthemes.

Clinicians needed to determine practical logistics and develop skills for both remote consulting and teaching. New format and structures of consultations needed planning. Differences from face-to-face teaching included scene-setting for the consultation and supervision factors. Telehealth teaching conferred new opportunities for learning but also challenges (e.g. consent, cues, uncertainty). Remote consultations are likely to remain a significant mode for doctor-patient interactions. Preliminary guidelines for teaching and learning using telehealth need to be developed and embedded into medical programmes and then evaluated.