Insights from a Virtual Clinical Immersion Program

Clinical immersion programs provide opportunities for biomedical engineering (BME) students to observe the clinical environment and medical devices in use, often leading to the identification of unmet clinical needs. Due to hospital restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person clinical immersion programs were generally not possible in summer 2020. Therefore, a six-week virtual clinical immersion program ran that summer. The program included meetings with guest clinicians and medical device sales representatives twice per week, and a group discussion held once per week. The meetings incorporated de-identified videos of medical procedures, clinician commentary of the videos, live video tours of hospital areas, clinician presentations, presentations and demonstrations by medical device sales representatives, and opportunities for discussions with these guests. The meetings were recorded and saved to create a Virtual Clinical Immersion Library. Pre and post program student self-assessment surveys showed significant increases in five ABET learning outcomes, two BME learning outcomes, and four program-specific learning outcomes. Post-graduation survey results of alumni from this program showed that all respondents had secured a job in the biomedical/engineering field or postgraduate education less than three months after graduation. These alumni are currently employed in the fields of biomedical products, healthcare, research and development, higher education, biotech, consulting, pharmaceutical, and other engineering. Overall, this virtual clinical immersion program filled a gap caused by COVID-19 pandemic closures and provided many benefits to the students that participated. The virtual program also provides an enduring library of video resources for current and future BME students.