Background:

Patient care restrictions created by the COVID-19 pandemic constrained medical students’ ability to interact directly with patients. Additionally, organ transplant recipients faced increasing isolation due to the rise of telemedicine, the importance of social distancing and their immunosuppressed state. We created a pilot program to pair students with transplant patients for structured, virtual encounters and studied its impact on medical students and patients.

Methods:

In May 2020, medical students conducted virtual visits with patients via telephone or video conferencing. Patients and students were surveyed regarding their experiences and independent focus groups were conducted. The survey responses and focus group discussions were deidentified, transcribed, and analyzed for themes.

Results:

Ten participating students were in their first, second, or final year of medical school. The 14 patients were liver or kidney transplant recipients or kidney donors. All interactions lasted longer than 30 minutes, with 56% greater than 1 hour. Three themes emerged related to the student experience: improvement of their clinical communication skills, development of knowledge and attitudes related to organ transplantation and donation, and independent management of a patient encounter. Three themes related to the patient experience: appreciation of the opportunity to share their personal patient experience to help educate future physicians, a cathartic and personally illuminating experience and an opportunity to share the message of donation.

Conclusions:

This pilot program provided a novel opportunity for virtual student-patient interactions that was feasible, well-received, and mutually beneficial. The use of virtual non-medical patient experiences allowed for experiential learning during which students learned about both clinical medicine and enhanced their communication skills directly from patients. Additionally, patients were able to engage with medical students in a new way, as teachers of clinical interactions, and reported a high level of satisfaction in addition to deriving personal benefit.

中文翻译：

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由于 COVID-19，医学生和患者从虚拟的非医学互动中受益

背景：

COVID-19 大流行造成的患者护理限制限制了医学生直接与患者互动的能力。此外，由于远程医疗的兴起、社交距离的重要性及其免疫抑制状态，器官移植接受者面临越来越多的孤立。我们创建了一个试点计划，将学生与移植患者配对，进行结构化的虚拟会面，并研究其对医学生和患者的影响。

方法：

2020 年 5 月，医学生通过电话或视频会议对患者进行了虚拟访问。对患者和学生的经历进行了调查，并进行了独立的焦点小组。对调查回复和焦点小组讨论进行了去识别、转录和主题分析。

结果：

十名参与的学生在医学院的第一年、第二年或最后一年。这 14 名患者是肝脏或肾脏移植受者或肾脏捐赠者。所有交互持续时间超过 30 分钟，其中 56% 超过 1 小时。出现了与学生体验相关的三个主题：提高他们的临床沟通技巧、发展与器官移植和捐赠相关的知识和态度，以及独立管理患者就诊。与患者体验相关的三个主题：感谢有机会分享他们的个人患者体验以帮助教育未来的医生、宣泄和个人启发的体验以及分享捐赠信息的机会。

结论：

该试点计划为虚拟的学生-患者互动提供了一个新的机会，这种互动是可行的、广受欢迎的和互惠互利的。使用虚拟的非医学患者体验可以进行体验式学习，在此期间，学生可以直接从患者那里了解临床医学并提高他们的沟通技巧。此外，患者能够以一种新的方式与医学生互动，作为临床互动的教师，并且除了获得个人利益外，还表现出高度的满意度。