Purpose: Develop a telemedicine standardized patient (SP) encounter on menopause to increase student comfort with climacteric symptoms and virtual encounters.
Background: Telemedicine has become a critical means of care provision due to both technological advances and the COVID-19 pandemic. However, medical students receive little training or practice in performing telehealth encounters. To increase student comfort with telemedicine, we piloted a telehealth SP encounter on menopausal complaints.
Methods: The experience included a virtual patient encounter, post-encounter note, and debrief with the SP. Students received real-time formative feedback on their history taking skills and treatment plan, as well as their ability to develop rapport in the virtual telehealth setting. Feedback on the encounter was obtained at the mid-clerkship review and on the end of clerkship survey. Descriptive statistics were tabulated for quantitative data. Qualitative analysis was used to identify themes from responses.
Results: Forty-four students participated in the SP encounter from March-July 2020. A majority of students (66%) described the virtual SP encounter as having excellent or above average educational value and 50% felt the encounter enhanced learning extremely well or very well. Student feedback on the telehealth SP encounter included the common themes of challenge/awkwardness connecting to a patient virtually (n=28, 64%), good practice/appreciation of exposure (n=21, 48%), and, much less commonly, logistic/technological difficulties (n=6, 14%) and the experience not being substantively different from traditional SP encounters (n=9, 20%).
Discussions: Integrating a telemedicine experience into the obstetrics and gynecology clerkship curriculum provides a rare opportunity for medical students to increase their comfort with virtual care provision.
Topics: CREOG & APGO Annual Meeting, 2021, Student, Faculty, Clerkship Director, Clerkship Coordinator, Patient Care, Professionalism, Systems-Based Practice & Improvement, Interpersonal & Communication Skills, Practice-Based Learning & Improvement, UME, Virtual Patient, Standardized Patient, General Ob-Gyn,
Hadley Reid, BA, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Duke University Medical Center; Cescille Gesher, AA, Graduate in Midwifery; Kelly Branford, BA; Tracey Reynolds, BA; Melody Baldwin, MD, MPH; Sarah Dotters-Katz, MD, MMHPE
