P-22 An innovative, blended, and supplementary clerkship to minimize clinical training gaps identified during the COVID-19 pandemic
Author(s):
K Connell , K Krishnamurthy , MH Campbell , H Harewood , N Greaves , A Kumar , D Springer , M O'Shea , A Harvey , PM Lashley , OP Adams , MAA Majumder
Type Of Study:
- Experimental or Intervention Study
- Observational Study
Year of Presentation:
2022
Objective:
1. To identify training gaps in junior clerkship rotations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
2. To develop a Clinical Transition Selective Clerkship (CTSC) during Year 4.
3. To seek student feedback on organization and management of the CTSC.
Design and Methods: An online cross-sectional survey of medical students was conducted during June-September 2021 to identify training gaps. In response to identified gaps, the 4-week CTSC was developed to provide further opportunities to develop core competencies.
Results: Just under half of students reported the opportunity to observe (45.7%) and perform (44.5%) core skills >3 times during the medicine junior clerkship. For the surgical clerkship, 48.3% observed and 44.2% performed core skills 1–3 times. For child health, 39.6% observed and 34.8% performed skills 1-3 times. More than half of respondents (55.3%) expressed concern that they missed the usual clinical clerkship training experiences during online rotations. Three-quarters (74.5%) expressed the need to acquire additional clinical experience. The majority of students rated the following aspects of the CTSC as ‘Good’ or better: clarity of goals and objectives (58.3%); educational value/amount learned (56.2%); professionalism of faculty (66.7%) and other clinical staff (75%); usefulness of feedback (75%); workload challenge/level of material appropriate (70.8%); overall rating/quality of CTS (60.4%). However, the following aspects were rated as ‘Poor’ or “Fair’: organization and coherency (77.1%); commitment of coordinators (64.6%); CTS achieved stated goals (62.5%).
Conclusion: Our study identified training gaps in junior clerkship rotations during the COVID-19 pandemic. The CTSC provided opportunities to develop clinical competencies disrupted by the pandemic.