Best Practices for Integrating Medical Students Into Telehealth Visits.

Maria Wamsley,Brian W Lin,Laeesha Cornejo,Joseph Sullivan,Tali Ziv,Jordan Yoder,Irina Kryzhanovskaya

doi:10.2196/27877

Abstract

Telehealth has become an increasingly important part of health care delivery, with a dramatic rise in telehealth visits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth visits will continue to be a part of care delivery after the pandemic subsides, and it is important that medical students receive training in telehealth skills to meet emerging telehealth competencies. This paper describes strategies for successfully integrating medical students into telehealth visits in the ambulatory setting based on existing literature and the extensive experience of the authors teaching and learning in the telehealth environment.

Highlights

Telehealth and telemedicine are terms that are used interchangeably in much of the existing literature and have become an increasingly important part of health care in the last several decades [1]
Telehealth or virtual visits are defined as live, synchronous, interactive encounters between a patient and a health care provider through video, telephone, or live chat [2]
The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly accelerated the use of telehealth visits to improve patient access to care and minimize risks to patients and health care providers [3,4], and even after the pandemic subsides, telehealth will remain an important and growing modality for care delivery [5]

Summary

Introduction

Telehealth and telemedicine are terms that are used interchangeably in much of the existing literature and have become an increasingly important part of health care in the last several decades [1]. Telehealth or virtual visits are defined as live, synchronous, interactive encounters between a patient and a health care provider through video, telephone, or live chat [2]. Telehealth provides teachers with opportunities both for direct observation of students’ patient communication and physical examination skills and for teaching focused on clinical reasoning [18].

Results

Conclusion