Exploration of Clinical Clerkship Remediation in Undergraduate Medical Programme during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Medical students in their clinical phase face various academic and non-academic challenges affecting their achievement of expected competencies. Medical students who fail competency assessments are encouraged to enrol in a remediation programme. Due to COVID-19, remediation learning activities have been altered to distance learning. Unfortunately, studies on clinical remediation programmes are scarce. This study aims to explore the clinical clerkship remediation process during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a reference for developing appropriate remediation programmes. This is a qualitative study with a phenomenological design. The remediation process was explored through focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews. Five FGDs with regular students, five FGDs with remedial students, five in-depth interviews with clinical lecturers and five in-depth interviews with education coordinators were completed. Four themes were identified from the gathered data: academic and non-academic factors influencing the need for remediation, planning, learning activities and assessment, and evaluation of learning processes and outcomes. Remediation during the clinical phase comprises several critical steps, and following the remediation process, students demonstrated improved performance. To improve the quality of the remediation process, the factors underlying the need for remediation should be determined.