The Impact of Tele-Education on Family Medicine Clerkship Students' Learning Outcomes.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemicnecessitated rapidchanges to medical educationfor student and patient protection. A dearth of published US studies examineresultingclinical education outcomesdue topandemic-induced curricula changes.We describe adaptations made toafamily medicine clerkship to move itfrom traditional in-person delivery to virtualonly,and then from virtualto hybrid;and compareeducationaloutcomes of students across delivery types. We stratified 386 medical students in their third year completing their 8-week family medicine clerkship bytype of content delivery,including in person, virtual only,and hybridinstruction.We examined the impact of these changes on three clerkship learning outcomes: the midblock assessment score,the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME)exam score,and the final numeric score(FNS). In our sample, 164 (42.5%) received content in person, 36 (9.3%) received virtual only, and 186 (48.2%) received hybridcontent.Studentsreceivingvirtual only (M=76.4, SD=9.1) had significantly higher midblock assessment scores (F=8.06,df=2,P=.0004) than studentsreceivinghybrid (M=71.7, SD=8.8) and in-person training (M=74.5, SD=7.2).Nosignificant differences existed in students' NBME exam scores or FNSs across deliverytypes. Students receiving virtual-onlyor hybrid contentperformed at least as well on threeclerkship-relatededucationaloutcomesas their pre-COVID peers participating in person.Further research is needed to understand how changes to medical education affected student learning and skill development.