950 Optimising Remote Near-Peer Teaching for Undergraduate Clinical Orthopaedic Skills - a Series of Quality Improvement
C McColm, T Williamson, R Kay, J Brennan, E Martinson- Surgery
Abstract
Aim
Undergraduate medical education has changed significantly following the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating the adaption of medical education to an online environment. The aim of this quality improvement project was to develop and refine a series of online orthopaedic teaching sessions to supplement history and examination teaching within the undergraduate curriculum.
Method
Near peer tutorials, led by final year students, were delivered to year 4 students at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. The series of interactive tutorials ran three times throughout the academic year. Qualitative and quantitative feedback was collected, and the tutorial content adapted and improved for future sessions. Attendees ranked their confidence to deal with orthopaedic pathology pre and post session on a Likert scale to quantify the value of these sessions.
Results
Attendees ranked their confidence in dealing with orthopaedic pathologies on a 1-10 Likert scale to quantify the effectiveness of the teaching sessions. Cycle 1 for the history and examination tutorials demonstrated a +2.75 (p = <0.001) and +3.15 (p = <0.001) mean improvement in overall student perceived ability. By cycle 3 this was increased to 2.64 (p = <0.001) for the history tutorial and +3.5 (p = 0.027) for the examination tutorial.
Conclusions
We have demonstrated that traditionally practical skills including history taking and orthopaedic examinations can be successfully implemented in a virtual environment. Online teaching methods can be utilised with great success within undergraduate trauma and orthopaedic teaching. Ensuring session interactivity, limiting session duration, and providing students with live feedback can greatly improve student satisfaction and thus improve the learning experience.