Final-year students' perceptions of online integrated primary care learning

Area of Science:

• Medical Education
• Digital Health
• Primary Health Care Training

Background:

• Integrated Primary Care (IPC) is a crucial final-year medical subject focusing on primary health care training.
• The COVID-19 pandemic intensified challenges in decentralized medical training, affecting standardization and patient exposure.
• This study investigated student experiences with online learning in IPC during the pandemic.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore medical students' perceptions and experiences of online learning in Integrated Primary Care.
• To identify facilitators and barriers to online learning in a clinical medical subject.
• To inform the design and implementation of effective online clinical education.

Main Methods:

• An explanatory-sequential mixed-methods study utilizing the technology acceptance model, community of inquiry, and self-regulated learning theories.
• A cross-sectional online survey distributed to 316 final-year medical students, with a 52% response rate.
• Follow-up focus group discussions (FGDs) with a subset of participants for in-depth qualitative insights.

Main Results:

• Over 93% of students found online content accessible and 80% found it logically organized.
• Key facilitators included course structure, organization, and diverse online activities.
• Significant challenges involved content comprehensiveness and learning clinical patient management online.

Conclusions:

• Despite limitations in online clinical learning, students perceived the course as supportive.
• Well-designed online content can effectively augment clinical medical education.
• Findings contribute to the understanding of online learning's value in clinical teaching.