A qualitative exploration of medical students' placement experiences with telehealth during COVID-19 and recommendations to prepare our future medical workforce

Sabrina W. Pit; Sue Velovski; Krista Cockrell; Jannine Bailey

doi:10.1186/s12909-021-02719-3

A qualitative exploration of medical students' placement experiences with telehealth during COVID-19 and recommendations to prepare our future medical workforce

Sabrina W. Pit, Sue Velovski, Krista Cockrell, Jannine Bailey

Western Sydney University

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Background: Clinical practice is increasingly being digitalised. Little is known about how medical students learn and were exposed to telehealth during COVID-19. This is particularly important if we wish to further improve healthcare access and equity in rural areas and vulnerable populations. This formative study sought to explore the exposure and attitudes of medical students on telehealth and COVID-19 during their rural clinical placement in 2020 and provide recommendations. Methods: Focus groups were held in August 2020 after completion of a 12-month rural placement. Questions centred around students’ exposure and experiences with telehealth during COVID-19. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results: There has been a clear shift in students now acknowledging the importance of telehealth and, more importantly, expressing a clear wish for telehealth to be embedded in the curriculum starting in their first year. In tandem with this, students expressed the need for their clinical supervisors or hospital teams to have the capability to practice telehealth efficiently as this will improve the telehealth experience and lead to better engagement for both staff and students. Furthermore, it was felt that rural clinicians should play a lead role in telehealth implementation given it is integral to rural practice. Conclusions: Medical students are more exposed to and more interested to learn about telehealth since COVID-19 and wish to see telehealth training built into their curriculum from the outset of medical school. Themes that emerged from this formative study can potentially assist in planning for telehealth education during and post COVID-19 and inform further telehealth research. Embedding telehealth skills training and guidelines into the medical program, and particularly rural medicine training programs, is essential to prepare the future medical workforce to ensure access and quality patient care during pandemics and also to improve access for rural Australians.

Original language	English
Article number	431
Number of pages	13
Journal	BMC Medical Education
Volume	21
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02719-3
Publication status	Published - 2021

Open Access - Access Right Statement

© The Author(s). 2021 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1186/s12909-021-02719-3

Cite this

@article{c88c3800433648028a697e2f424a44a4,

title = "A qualitative exploration of medical students' placement experiences with telehealth during COVID-19 and recommendations to prepare our future medical workforce",

abstract = "Background: Clinical practice is increasingly being digitalised. Little is known about how medical students learn and were exposed to telehealth during COVID-19. This is particularly important if we wish to further improve healthcare access and equity in rural areas and vulnerable populations. This formative study sought to explore the exposure and attitudes of medical students on telehealth and COVID-19 during their rural clinical placement in 2020 and provide recommendations. Methods: Focus groups were held in August 2020 after completion of a 12-month rural placement. Questions centred around students{\textquoteright} exposure and experiences with telehealth during COVID-19. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results: There has been a clear shift in students now acknowledging the importance of telehealth and, more importantly, expressing a clear wish for telehealth to be embedded in the curriculum starting in their first year. In tandem with this, students expressed the need for their clinical supervisors or hospital teams to have the capability to practice telehealth efficiently as this will improve the telehealth experience and lead to better engagement for both staff and students. Furthermore, it was felt that rural clinicians should play a lead role in telehealth implementation given it is integral to rural practice. Conclusions: Medical students are more exposed to and more interested to learn about telehealth since COVID-19 and wish to see telehealth training built into their curriculum from the outset of medical school. Themes that emerged from this formative study can potentially assist in planning for telehealth education during and post COVID-19 and inform further telehealth research. Embedding telehealth skills training and guidelines into the medical program, and particularly rural medicine training programs, is essential to prepare the future medical workforce to ensure access and quality patient care during pandemics and also to improve access for rural Australians.",

author = "Pit, {Sabrina W.} and Sue Velovski and Krista Cockrell and Jannine Bailey",

year = "2021",

doi = "10.1186/s12909-021-02719-3",

language = "English",

volume = "21",

journal = "BMC Medical Education",

issn = "1472-6920",

publisher = "BioMed Central",

number = "1",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - A qualitative exploration of medical students' placement experiences with telehealth during COVID-19 and recommendations to prepare our future medical workforce

AU - Pit, Sabrina W.

AU - Velovski, Sue

AU - Cockrell, Krista

AU - Bailey, Jannine

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - Background: Clinical practice is increasingly being digitalised. Little is known about how medical students learn and were exposed to telehealth during COVID-19. This is particularly important if we wish to further improve healthcare access and equity in rural areas and vulnerable populations. This formative study sought to explore the exposure and attitudes of medical students on telehealth and COVID-19 during their rural clinical placement in 2020 and provide recommendations. Methods: Focus groups were held in August 2020 after completion of a 12-month rural placement. Questions centred around students’ exposure and experiences with telehealth during COVID-19. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results: There has been a clear shift in students now acknowledging the importance of telehealth and, more importantly, expressing a clear wish for telehealth to be embedded in the curriculum starting in their first year. In tandem with this, students expressed the need for their clinical supervisors or hospital teams to have the capability to practice telehealth efficiently as this will improve the telehealth experience and lead to better engagement for both staff and students. Furthermore, it was felt that rural clinicians should play a lead role in telehealth implementation given it is integral to rural practice. Conclusions: Medical students are more exposed to and more interested to learn about telehealth since COVID-19 and wish to see telehealth training built into their curriculum from the outset of medical school. Themes that emerged from this formative study can potentially assist in planning for telehealth education during and post COVID-19 and inform further telehealth research. Embedding telehealth skills training and guidelines into the medical program, and particularly rural medicine training programs, is essential to prepare the future medical workforce to ensure access and quality patient care during pandemics and also to improve access for rural Australians.

AB - Background: Clinical practice is increasingly being digitalised. Little is known about how medical students learn and were exposed to telehealth during COVID-19. This is particularly important if we wish to further improve healthcare access and equity in rural areas and vulnerable populations. This formative study sought to explore the exposure and attitudes of medical students on telehealth and COVID-19 during their rural clinical placement in 2020 and provide recommendations. Methods: Focus groups were held in August 2020 after completion of a 12-month rural placement. Questions centred around students’ exposure and experiences with telehealth during COVID-19. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Results: There has been a clear shift in students now acknowledging the importance of telehealth and, more importantly, expressing a clear wish for telehealth to be embedded in the curriculum starting in their first year. In tandem with this, students expressed the need for their clinical supervisors or hospital teams to have the capability to practice telehealth efficiently as this will improve the telehealth experience and lead to better engagement for both staff and students. Furthermore, it was felt that rural clinicians should play a lead role in telehealth implementation given it is integral to rural practice. Conclusions: Medical students are more exposed to and more interested to learn about telehealth since COVID-19 and wish to see telehealth training built into their curriculum from the outset of medical school. Themes that emerged from this formative study can potentially assist in planning for telehealth education during and post COVID-19 and inform further telehealth research. Embedding telehealth skills training and guidelines into the medical program, and particularly rural medicine training programs, is essential to prepare the future medical workforce to ensure access and quality patient care during pandemics and also to improve access for rural Australians.

UR - https://hdl.handle.net/1959.7/uws:63413

U2 - 10.1186/s12909-021-02719-3

DO - 10.1186/s12909-021-02719-3

M3 - Article

SN - 1472-6920

VL - 21

JO - BMC Medical Education

JF - BMC Medical Education

IS - 1

M1 - 431

ER -

A qualitative exploration of medical students' placement experiences with telehealth during COVID-19 and recommendations to prepare our future medical workforce

Abstract

Open Access - Access Right Statement

UN SDGs

Access to Document

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this