Telemedicine experience of NYC Internal Medicine residents during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the resilience of public health, including diagnostic testing, antiviral development and transmission prevention. In addition, it also affected the medical education of many residents and learners throughout the country. Historically, physicians undergoing their residency training were not involved in telemedicine. However, in response to the challenges faced due to COVID-19, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) released a provision in May 2020 to allow residents to participate in telemedicine. Method Lincoln Medical Center, located in the South Bronx of New York City, currently has 115 Internal Medicine residents, and telemedicine clinic visits have been conducted by residents since June 2020. An anonymous 25-question survey was sent to all Internal Medicine residents between August 8, 2020 to August 14, 2020. Result Of 115 residents, 95 (82.6% of the residents) replied to this questionnaire. Residents revealed feeling less confident in managing chronic diseases through telemedicine visits. The survey also shows that 83.1% of respondents prefer in-person visits during their training, 65.3% feel that the telemedicine experience will affect their future career choice, and 67.4% would prefer less than 50% of visits to be telemedicine in their future careers. Outcome The purpose of the new ACGME rules allowing telemedicine was to prevent the undertraining of residents and maintain health care for the patient during the COVID-19 pandemic. This affects residency training and the experiences of residents, which in turn can influence their future career plans.

The management of COVID-19 cases through telemedicine in Brazil

“…There exists doubts from doctors that are repetitive, so developing systems that can automatizes this systematic process such as question answering AI systems will increase the efficiency of time response. Historically, medical education have not developed treatment programs for Telemedicine [51], therefore we suggest that medical residents be involved in telehealth programs since is training formation.…”

Telehealth Attitudes, Training, and Preparedness Among First-Year Internal Medicine Residents in the COVID-19 Era

“…Low confidence levels in using phone visits to manage chronic diseases have been reported among IM residents. 17 Low levels of confidence have been found in prior studies to be a potential barrier to telehealth use. 21 This lack of preparedness identifies an important Fig.…”

“…A single-site study of IM residents in August of 2020 showed a strong preference for in-person visits over phone visits; however, video visits were not conducted at that program. 17 Despite widespread advocacy for telehealth training, there are surprisingly few studies of telehealth training that occurs during medical school. The most recent data available from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) show that 44 out of 147 schools offered pre-clerkship courses and 68 offered clerkship courses.…”

Educational opportunities for postgraduate medical trainees during the COVID-19 pandemic: deriving value from old, new and emerging ways of learning

“…Virtual clinics have been successfully implemented across medical and surgical specialties. 21 22 Formal curricula for teaching telemedicine skills to trainees have been well received. 23 …”