Virtual teaching of undergraduate primary care small groups during Covid-19

Patel, Bakula; Taggar, Jaspal S

Abstract

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic required Higher Educational Institutions to redesign and implement new ways of delivering core learning outcomes for medical students. Much of this change resulted in transition to virtual teaching across medical schools. Medical education in primary care is often delivered as part of GP-facilitated small group teaching and with this came unique challenges for the transition to online education.

Transition to virtual small group teaching utilised blended learning and flipped classroom methodologies alongside the use of virtual teaching platforms. This quality improvement project describes the educational approaches used when transitioning medical education, and compares student experience from receiving small group teaching using face-to-face and virtual teaching methods before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Analysis of student feedback found an ongoing delivery of high quality primary care education using virtual small group teaching, and that there was no attrition in student experience when compared to face-to-face teaching delivered before COVID-19 for the same learning outcomes.

These findings are reassuring and suggest that transition to virtual small group teaching, using methods such as flipped classrooms and blended learning, enables continued and sustained delivery of high quality education and student experiences in primary care.

Citation

Patel, B., & Taggar, J. S. (2021). Virtual teaching of undergraduate primary care small groups during Covid-19. Education for Primary Care, 32(5), 296-302. https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2021.1920475

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Apr 19, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jun 28, 2021
• Publication Date: Jun 28, 2021
• Deposit Date: Apr 27, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 29, 2022
• Journal: Education for Primary Care
• Print ISSN: 1473-9879
• Electronic ISSN: 1475-990X
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 296-302
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14739879.2021.1920475
• Keywords: Family Practice
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/5498940
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14739879.2021.1920475
• Additional Information: This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Education for Primary Care. Bakula Patel & Jaspal S Taggar (2021) Virtual teaching of undergraduate primary care small groups during Covid-19, Education for Primary Care, DOI: 10.1080/14739879.2021.1920475. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.