363 Developing an International Clinical Teaching Programme for Final Year Medical Students for the COVID Pandemic and Beyond, an Italian Experience

Abstract

Abstract Introduction During the COVID-19 pandemic medical students’ time in a clinical setting in the University of Pavia (UNIPV) had been greatly reduced for justifiable safety concerns. Aim Providing clinical teaching to medical students with an international network of UNIPV alumni. Method We recruited a cohort of UNIPV alumni, now working as junior-doctors throughout the UK and Ireland to teach and share their experience in assessing patients and creating management plans for commonly encountered scenarios on-call. 12 sessions were held over Zoom Online Videoconferencing and covered a broad surgical and medical syllabus via clinical cases. Pre- and post- teaching questionnaires were used to review the outcomes of intervention. Results Students reported an average confidence increase from 4.48/10 to 6.63/10 in patient assessment. Encouragingly, confidence in history taking stood at 8.38/10 after participating in the course. 37.5% of participants were interested in becoming tutors when running the course again next year and overall, 75% of participating students would recommend this course to students in successive years. Conclusions From our results the significant increase in confidence of students in assessing, examining, and patients as expected of day one junior doctors is notable. One limitation was the inability to substitute the practical skills aspect of clinical teaching due to the online delivery of the course. A future ‘blended’ delivery may overcome this. Given its positive response, we hope that this course can leave a lasting impact with further courses being run in the future for successive years by the future UNIPV alumni.