Distant surgical teaching during COVID‐19 ‐ A pilot study on final year medical students

Abstract

Introduction Due to the COVID‐19 outbreak, all on‐site undergraduate medical teaching activities in Hong Kong have been suspended. A new web‐based surgical skills learning (WSSL) for basic surgical skills training that were normally taught face‐to‐face was developed. Methodology Basic surgical skills were taught with normal face‐to‐face tutorial to 30 final year medical students prior to the outbreak. The same group of students were invited to join the online WSSL using Zoom. Evaluation of WSSL was performed by a standardized questionnaire. Results Thirty final year medical students (16 female, 14 male students) were recruited into the study. Median age was 23 (range 22‐24). Most of them believed that WSSL is easy to follow. When compared to face‐to‐face teaching. Most students (N = 22, 73.4%) felt that WSSL was just as difficult/easy as conventional teaching for learning instrumental knots. Students were asked to evaluate WSSL by using a Likert scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being highly recommended). Twelve (40%) students highly recommended WSSL (Score 9 to 10), 15 students (50%) slightly recommended WSSL (Score 6‐8). Conclusion Web‐based surgical skills learning is a feasible alternative for face‐to‐face surgical skills teaching.

Effectiveness of Virtual Medical Teaching During the COVID-19 Crisis: Systematic Review

“…A significant number of published studies indicated that a major disadvantage of virtual teaching is technical difficulties [11,15,18,21,22,25,27,29,30,37,38,42,44]. On further analysis of the technical difficulties experienced by students, several different challenges to virtual teaching arose.…”

COVID-19 as a chance for hybrid teaching concepts

“…Especially the breakout rooms, in which participants can be divided into small groups for discussions or meetings for a certain period of time, make it possible to do justice to the current conditions and still maintain a high level of interaction. The experience of ETHZ corresponds with the experiences of other institutions [ 4 ], [ 5 ].…”

Telehealth practice in surgery: Ethical and medico‐legal considerations

“…In the news report, the attending doctor was able to answer the patient's queries and examine the wound closely using the commercially available videoconference software 19 . In the realm of surgical education, the University of Hong Kong has developed a new web‐based surgical skills learning (WSSL) for basic surgical skill training with promising feedback from a group of final year medical students 20 . In light of the aforesaid benefits, it is envisaged that telehealth will gain further momentum and become a new norm of interaction between healthcare professionals and patients.…”

“…19 In the realm of surgical education, the University of Hong Kong has developed a new web-based surgical skills learning (WSSL) for basic surgical skill training with promising feedback from a group of final year medical students. 20 In light of the aforesaid benefits, it is envisaged that telehealth will gain further momentum and become a new norm of interaction between healthcare professionals and patients. the patient agrees to be treated, whether or not there has been an encounter in person between the physician (or other appropriately supervised health care practitioner) and patient".…”