Telemedicine Training in Undergraduate Medical Education: Mixed-Methods Review.

Shayan Waseh,Adam P Dicker

doi:10.2196/12515

Abstract

BackgroundTelemedicine has grown exponentially in the United States over the past few decades, and contemporary trends in the health care environment are serving to fuel this growth into the future. Therefore, medical schools are learning to incorporate telemedicine competencies into the undergraduate medical education of future physicians so that they can more effectively leverage telemedicine technologies for improving the quality of care, increasing patient access, and reducing health care expense. This review articulates the efforts of allopathic-degree-granting medical schools in the United States to characterize and systematize the learnings that have been generated thus far in the domain of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education.ObjectiveThe aim of this review was to collect and outline the current experiences and learnings that have been generated as medical schools have sought to implement telemedicine capacity-building into undergraduate medical education.MethodsWe performed a mixed-methods review, starting with a literature review via Scopus, tracking with Excel, and an email outreach effort utilizing telemedicine curriculum data gathered by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education. This outreach included 70 institutions and yielded 7 interviews, 4 peer-reviewed research papers, 6 online documents, and 3 completed survey responses.ResultsThere is an emerging, rich international body of learning being generated in the field of telemedicine training in undergraduate medical education. The integration of telemedicine-based lessons, ethics case-studies, clinical rotations, and even teleassessments are being found to offer great value for medical schools and their students. Most medical students find such training to be a valuable component of their preclinical and clinical education for a variety of reasons, which include fostering greater familiarity with telemedicine and increased comfort with applying telemedical approaches in their future careers.ConclusionsThese competencies are increasingly important in tackling the challenges facing health care in the 21st century, and further implementation of telemedicine curricula into undergraduate medical education is highly merited.

Highlights

The Context of Telemedicine in the United StatesTelemedicine has grown exponentially over the past few decades in the United States
The aim of this review was to characterize, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the diverse approaches being undertaken by medical schools and other health care institutions to implement telemedicine training into undergraduate medical education, and to allow for a better understanding of the current state of telemedicine capacity-building in undergraduate medical education in the United States
The preclinical years of undergraduate medical education represent an important window of opportunity for telemedicine training and exposure

Summary

Introduction

Telemedicine has grown exponentially over the past few decades in the United States It is currently utilized by a majority of health care institutions and its market is expected to reach over US $40 billion in 2018 [1,2]. Telemedicine has grown exponentially in the United States over the past few decades, and contemporary trends in the health care environment are serving to fuel this growth into the future. Methods: We performed a mixed-methods review, starting with a literature review via Scopus, tracking with Excel, and an email outreach effort utilizing telemedicine curriculum data gathered by the Liaison Committee on Medical Education This outreach included 70 institutions and yielded 7 interviews, 4 peer-reviewed research papers, 6 online documents, and 3 completed survey responses. Conclusions: These competencies are increasingly important in tackling the challenges facing health care in the 21st century, and further implementation of telemedicine curricula into undergraduate medical education is highly merited

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Conclusion