gms | German Medical Science

During clinical decision making primary care physicians or medical specialists of various disciplines compile information from the patient’s history, the physical examination, and diagnostic procedures, which are performed and appraised by medical specialists. To make the best use of diagnostic procedures, all practising physicians should rely on skills related to clinical diagnostic sciences (CDS) as specified for undergraduate medical education [1], [2], [3].

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 Austrian hospitals reduced the number of internships for fifth-year medical students, thus canceling their workplace-based learning of CDS. The Learning Development Team of the Teaching Center was approached – more than ten teams from different departments of the Medical University were approached – by the Director of the Curriculum to create replacement learning scenarios, covering some KLZÖ learning goals (Austrian National Learning Objectives Catalogue for Undergraduate Medical Education) with the following specifications:

1.

Online activities: to comply with COVID-19 measures

2.

Self-directed learning: to facilitate the transition to workplace-based learning

The last author’s rich archive of radiological cases made it feasible to focus the development of virtual patient learning materials (VPs) on CDS related to radiology.

The students’ motivation engaging in CDS learning goals varies greatly. Tasks like identifying anatomical structures and pathologies on radiological images might not seem relevant to some students. During class, teachers remediate such motivational difficulties by illustrating how CDS knowledge enhances clinical decisions. To foster students’ motivation in online learning, we structure the students’ tasks around three types of clinical activities, thus highlighting the specific CDS knowledge for decision making.

All physicians referring to medical imaging need detailed knowledge about indications and difficulties in performing radiological investigations.

Radiologists carry out the radiological reporting, but all physicians need skills in recognizing abnormalities on radiological images.

All physicians need to talk about imaging with patients in a comprehensible manner (examples see table 1 [Tab. 1]).

During workplace-based learning students observe the decision making of senior doctors. Students participate in this process in a self-directed way by attempting problem solving and by reflecting on work practices between together with the supervisor, creating knowledge as a shared activity. Since the transition to workplace-based learning is difficult for undergraduates [4], we propose VPs to show them “how to learn” in a self-directed way while showing them “what to learn”. While students complete relevant tasks with authentic patient information [5], [6], they compare their approach with the approach of experts using four categories ranging from 0% (no concordance, different approach) through 40% or 80% to 100% (similar approach) to self-score the quiz. Including an appropriate basic science question together with a clinical application question, activates the students’ basic sciences knowledge. A short teaching summary promotes learning. Self-Study Quizzes were presented using Moodle, or in interactive webinars (without concordance rating).

To evaluate we prompt students to comment on each quiz freely; we also compare the mean share of credits earned by students choosing to participate in our learning activities with the share of credits provided by our learning materials within the overall replacement program.

Twenty self-study quizzes and nine interactive live webinars were developed, covering 16 KLZÖ-objectives (up to five objectives per VP). Three learning activity types highlighted the learner’s perspective during the development of the quizzes’ content.

By participating in all available replacement activities, one could overfulfill the requirements by about 75 percentage points. As our learning activities accounted for 13% of available credits, nobody was obliged to participate since there were alternatives available. In June 2020, 486 fifth-year students completed the replacement program and earned a mean share of credits by participating in our quizzes and webinars of 16% (standard deviation±10). Students chose our activities as compared to the alternatives with a similar preference. Students’ self-scoring resulted in a mean concordance score of 81% (SD=10%). On average 10% (SD=3%) of students commented per quiz, expressing predominately satisfaction (e.g. great case, ☺ ) or neutrality (e.g. “thanks”, “nothing in particular”).

Defining three types of clinical activities helped in guiding the development of VPs requiring CDS skills related to radiology, which have previously been proposed for medical undergraduates [7]. The VP-based quizzes and webinars showed high acceptance among the students and can be improved based on the provided comments.

Our approach in guiding the development of online VPs to improve the transition of students to workplace-based learning demonstrates high acceptance among students. As such, the second edition for all quizzes is currently under preparation. Besides working on covering more of the KLZÖ learning goals, development has to focus on systematically describing how CDS knowledge is needed in varying clinical settings to systematically prepare students for the challenges they face related to learning in the clinical workplace.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.