Student assessment of classroom-based non-contact hospital therapy in a COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Introduction. The work is devoted to the estimation of students' opinion on the use in the conditions of the current educational practice of the business game technique modified for the practical training on hospital therapy in full-time form in the premises of the university outside the clinical base that excluded the opportunity to work with real patients. Materials and Methods. Twenty-eight 6-year students of the Faculty of Medicine and Prophylaxis participated in the pilot project on the terms of voluntary consent. The students' opinion about the proposed form of the class was evaluated in an anonymous questionnaire using the Internet platform Google Forms. In the course of the class, each student consistently acted in the role of a patient, a doctor, and an insurance company expert in parsing a clinical situation formed on the basis of the assessment fund and universal instructions for a standard patient. The feedback forms allowed to objectivize the estimations of the necessary competences mastering and to reveal the main problems in mastering of communication skills, examination, medical triage and making of evidence-based clinical decisions, conditioned by the forced transition to the distance learning format, as well as to define the volume and the list of the corrective measures aimed to increase the quality of medical university graduates training. Results and Discussion. Respondents positively evaluated the proposed form of practical training in the inaccessibility of patient contact. However, they noted significant difficulties in performing both the role of a standardized patient and that of a physician or insurance company expert. Conclusion. The urgent pilot testing of the model of full-time practical training based on the "standardized patient" technology and the business game "patient-doctor-expert of an insurance company" allowed the trainees to realize the main problems in mastering the skills of communication, examination, medical triage and making evidence-based clinical decisions caused by the forced transition to a distance learning format. The results obtained will allow us to determine the scope and list of corrective measures aimed at improving the quality of medical university graduates' training.