Telemedicine education for medical students and residents worldwide: A scoping review protocol

Telemedicine has become an increasingly important component of contemporary health care delivery, yet its integration into undergraduate and graduate medical education remains variable and insufficiently standardized. Although individual studies have described telemedicine training initiatives, the literature remains fragmented across disciplines, learner groups, and geographic settings, limiting understanding of how telemedicine is taught, learned, assessed, and implemented for medical trainees worldwide. This scoping review aims to map the characteristics of telemedicine education for medical students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate entry physician training programs and for resident physicians, examine variation across learner groups, specialties, and geographic contexts, and identify reported implementation factors, barriers, facilitators, and evidence gaps. The review will follow Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. A comprehensive search will be conducted in MEDLINE, Embase, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Education Resources Information Center, Web of Science, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, with additional studies identified through reference list screening of included articles. Two reviewers will independently screen titles, abstracts, and full-texts against predefined eligibility criteria and will extract data using a structured, piloted form. Findings will be synthesized descriptively in tabular and narrative formats to characterize curricular content, teaching methods, assessment strategies, and contextual influences on implementation. By providing a comprehensive map of the existing literature, this review will inform future curriculum development, educational research, and policy related to telemedicine training in medical education. Review registration: Open Science Framework (OSF) (https://osf.io/jxudv).