Zooming-out COVID-19: Virtual clinical experiences in an emergency medicine clerkship.

Abstract

In the setting of the novel 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, it has been challenging to provide medical students in the Emergency Medicine (EM) clerkship meaningful clinical experiences that would meet clinical course goals and objectives, as well as satisfy Liaison Committee for Medical Education (LCME) requirements. During the EM clerkship, students play an integral role in interviewing patients, formulating treatment plans, facilitating patient discharges, and counseling patients. Immediately available direct and indirect supervision are paramount to ensure student learning and safe patient care. The authors present a novel clinical educational experience for senior medical students in an EM clerkship that fulfills specific clinical course learning objectives, while still providing students the opportunity to interact live with patients. We designed a virtual clinical experience where students performed supervised 'virtual callbacks' for patients recently evaluated in the ED. Student feedback on this experience has been positive. Completing the COVID-19 callbacks decreased some of the clinical burden on the department. Patients, too, were grateful for the follow-up.