Perceived clinical readiness of senior medical students asoutcomes of online clerkship in the Philippines: newnormal in medical education

Abstract

NTRODUCTION: COVID-19 formed new challenges to the medical institutions; itresulted in the transition from the usual face-to-face classes and direct clerkship training withinthe hospital to a new remote learning with online lectures and virtual clinical experience. Giventhe new online interactive setting, problems were raised given the limited patient care andinteraction as well as restricted bedside teaching opportunities and its impact on how medicalstudents can acquire and hone their clinical skills. OBJECTIVE: To determine the perceived clinicalreadiness of the medical clerks in the new normal setting in the Philippines. METHODOLOGY:Convenience sampling was used to gather respondents who were asked to answer an onlinesurvey questionnaire. The questions pertained to: academic training profile, clinical skills, patientmanagement, communication, understanding clinical guidelines, and personal development. Afteranalyzing the data, the scales of readiness from these subjects were gathered. RESULTS: Themedical clerks in the Philippines perceived that they were ready with regards to understandingclinical guidelines, communication, personal development, and patient management. They weremoderately ready in the different clinical skills in the departments of Family and CommunityMedicine, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Surgery and Obstetrics and Gynecology with somespecific skills in Surgery and Obstetrics and Gynecology being perceived as less ready than therest. CONCLUSION: The impact of the pandemic has disrupted the student’s confidence andreadiness. This shows that online clerkship in this time of pandemic may have provided learningto a certain degree but it is not enough to replace what face-to-face training could offer.