Training Medical Students as COVID-19 First Contact Responders: Integrating Telemedicine and Medical Education during a Health System Crisis in Sri Lanka

Abstract

specialists to medical students. Since the expected number of calls was high, the service decided to recruit and train medical students as first contact responders. At the time of initiation, medical education of students in Sri Lanka was limited to online lectures and clinical training was on halt for most academic batches. Thus, recruiting medical students to the system created the opportunity to train them in healthcare provision without actually exposing them to the ongoing pandemic.Volunteers were invited through social media groups. The volunteers, including doctors and medical students, were trained separately via initial online training programmes. Training needs were identified according to the diverse levels of knowledge and experience of volunteers. A range of competencies, including clinical reasoning, patient management, communication skills, teamwork, health education and handling difficult situations had to be inculcated. This included training on how to assess a patient and get all essential information within the system allocated time limit of 10 minutes.