P1026 - Telemedicine Education for Third- and Fourth-Year Medical Students During a Pandemic

Program Goals
Telemedicine has revolutionized a new wave of education during the COVID-19 pandemic that has displaced medical students from learning during their clinical years in hospitals and outpatient clinics. The goal of this program evaluation is to analyze telemedicine education in an outpatient pediatric clinic setting to see how this way of learning is improving and maintaining education during difficult and unconventional times compared to the standard remote didactics currently being held.

Evaluation
The Zoom Meeting application is used to host a setting of medical students with medical providers in one virtual space. This application is utilized on a large iPad in a clinic where the medical provider will bring the medical students virtually into each patient room. Medical students are observing how to solicit a history, perform physical exams, communicate with both parents and patients, and create differential diagnoses and management plans for each individualized patient experience.

For three days out of the week, medical students are experiencing live virtual patient encounters and formulating differential diagnoses and management plans with the medical provider as they would in a real physical outpatient clinic setting. Various medical providers including pediatricians, pediatric-trained physician assistants and nurse practitioners also conducted interactive didactics using the Socratic method on pertinent pediatric topics for two days out of the week. Medical students also learned from observing how the providers engaged with various subspecialists via cellphone or e-mail to arrange specialty care efficiently. Overall, medical students were more engaged and focused with the telemedicine option of learning rather than the standard virtual didactics.

Discussion
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was widespread uncertainty about how to manage third- and fourth-year medical students’ education as they were forced to pause their hospital and clinic experiences. Medical schools across the United States implemented Zoom meetings hosting didactics, but telemedicine involving live patient encounters has not been generally executed as a remote option of learning and continuing education. From positive feedback and constructive criticism with fellow students, it has been found that utilizing telemedicine as a way of continuing education is more beneficial given the circumstances and restrictions ensued from the COVID-19 pandemic. The main downfall we saw was physical exams could not be directly performed, but they were observed, and pertinent positives were discussed. Even after the restrictions cause by COVID-19 pandemic experience, telemedicine education could continue to provide a unique opportunity to unite medical students with medical providers that they would not ordinarily have the chance to work with.