Abstract

Experiential learning from the senior medical students should be context-specific with most of the teaching of clinical skills happened in the clinical areas. Bedside teaching in the clinical areas is currently, and probably in the coming year, restricted to avoid cross-infection of COVID-19 virus in the hospital. The clinical context of bedside teaching can be supplemented by video and audio recording of clinical skills adopted by experienced ICU physicians when they are taking care of the critically ill patients. Recording of the clinical encounter of patients suffering from dysfunctions of the cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological system will be produced, and clarification of the relevant concept and skills will be added to the video in the form of annotation. The recording will be created by video-recording glasses and digital stethoscope used by the physicians to make sure that the context is comparable to a genuine clinical encounter from the physician viewpoint. The newly produced eLearning material can likely enhance students’ engagement to the learning of clinical skills and their preparedness in the limited chance of bedside teaching during the pandemic. The new approach of clinical education will be evaluated by questionnaire surveys with the final year medical students and focus group interviews with both students and clinical teachers.

Brief write-up

Project objectives

Video and audio recordings of the clinical encounter from the ICU physicians’ eyes and ears can partially supplement the lacking clinical context of learning clinical skills when bedside teaching is restricted due to the pandemic. Therefore we propose to produce pre-class eLearning material using a digital stethoscope and video recording glasses to record physical examinations from the ICU physicians’ point of view. The newly developed eLearning material will likely engage the student in learning clinical skills and better prepare them for the limited opportunities of bedside clinical teaching during the pandemic.

Activities, process and outcomes

Three micro modules related to three abnormal organ functions: (1) Cardiovascular system; (2) Respiratory system; and (3) Neurological system are produced. These three micro modules will be presented in two formats in the eLearning platform. The first one will be an electronic tutorial format consisting of a series of questions prompting students to discuss the correlation between the clinical features and pathophysiology of the diseases. The second one will be a narrative presentation explaining the physical examination findings.

Deliverables and evaluation

Face-to-face teaching in ICU for final year medical students (in a group of 20-22 students every three weeks) will be resumed in late June or early July 2022. The new teaching material will be evaluated by three groups of students (around 60 students) attached to the ICU.

Dissemination, diffusion, impact and sharing of good practices

The development process, students’ participation rate and evaluation will be submitted to the CUHK Teaching and Learning Innovation Expo 2022 and the Asia Pacific Medical Education conference 2023 as an abstract or poster submission.

Impact on teaching and learning

With the availability of handy visual-audio equipment, teaching material using recordings of real patient’s clinical condition can potentially engage medical students. This can be applied in undergraduate teaching of other specialties.