A virtual teaching clinic for virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic
- PDF / 925,032 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 22 Downloads / 214 Views
(2020) 6:25
COMMENTARY
Open Access
A virtual teaching clinic for virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic Xin He1* , Daniel Shelden1, Andrew Kraftson1, Tobias Else1 and Richard J. Auchus1,2,3
Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the rapid transition of in-person outpatient care to telemedicine, and clinical training to remote learning. The endocrinology fellows at the University of Michigan maintain their own continuity-of-care clinics and rotate in the Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System. For these clinics, we sought to preserve patient staffing with expert attending physicians and continue the clinical training experience in a remote setting. We have adapted the online conferencing platform, Zoom, to integrate learners into a virtual teaching clinic environment. By using the Zoom “breakout room” feature, fellows are able to match staffing attending physicians to different patient cases, according to attending physicians’ areas of specialty. Similar to the traditional teaching clinic environment, our remote staffing strategy has ensured that fellows continue to provide excellent patient care and fulfill educational aims across our University and VA facilities. Outpatient clinics in other University of Michigan departments and other academic centers have inquired about or have begun utilizing our method. Even beyond COVID-19, our paradigm potentially provides a convenient virtual staffing platform to serve patient populations with geographic or transportation challenges. Following implementation, stakeholders can regularly evaluate the approach to continually improve both patient care and medical education. Keywords: Telemedicine, Virtual care, Preceptor, Resident, Fellow
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has brought profound challenges across all spheres of medicine, including medical education. Trainees typically acquire outpatient clinical knowledge through in-person care of patients with attending physician supervision. Outpatient care has transitioned to telemedicine visits, and training curricula have shifted to remote learning. With trainees and faculty members sheltering at home, we sought a solution that allows multiple providers to provide education and patient care from different locations. * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology & Diabetes, University of Michigan, 1500 East Medical Center Drive, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Transition to virtual teaching clinic The endocrinology fellows at the University of Michigan maintain a continuity-of-care clinic, in which different attending physicians rotate every week to staff patients. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, four attending endocrinologists would be stationed in workrooms, and the eight fellows would staff each patient with an available attending physician, seeking also to match a faculty physician’s area of expertise to the given complaint. The endocrinology clinics at the Ann Arbor Veterans
Data Loading...
