Teaching an intensive core course for medical students in the era of Covid-19: Mindful Medical Practice on Zoom
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background
The COVID19 pandemic brought many challenges, including delivering interactive courses such as the Mindful Medical Practice (MMP) program to medical students. It also provided opportunities to trial online teaching of the program using technologies such as Zoom.
Approach
Medical educators from McGill University in Montreal and The Rural Clinical School of Western Australia in Busselton collaborated via Zoom to adapt the MMP program to an online format. This involved weekly meetings to adapt each class and debrief following its delivery. A number of adaptations were required which were implemented with ease while maintaining the program’s integrity.
Evaluation
The facilitator found the course relatively straightforward to teach with Zoom. In their essays at the end of the coursethe students reported that the MMP program was a valuable experience that they found to be “enjoyable”, “positive”, “interesting”, “beneficial” and “refreshing”. They reported that the online experience offered benefits over face-to-face delivery and was particularly helpful during the COVID19 pandemic.
Reflection
There were a number of potential limitations: this was a relatively small group of students; the students were already well acquainted with the facilitator; the students and the facilitator were experienced in using Zoom for teaching. The major strength was a clear demonstration of the feasibility of delivering the entire program online that is particularly relevant during this time of stress and uncertainty and also expands the potential to provide this teaching to students and universities across the world.
Article Details
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Creative Comons 4.0 CC-BY
Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
References
McKimm J, Gibbs T, Bishop J, Jones P . Health professions' educators' adaptation to rapidly changing circumstances: The Ottawa 2020 Conference Experience. Med Ed Publish. 2020. https://doi.org/10.15694/mep.2020.000047.1
Liben S & Hutchinson TA. MD Aware: A Mindful Medical Practice Course Guide. Switzerland: Springer International Publishing; 2019.
Hutchinson TA, Liben S. Mindful medical practice: An innovative core course to prepare medical students for clerkship. Perspect Med Educ. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-020-00591-3.
Kemper KJ. Brief online mindfulness training: immediate impact. J Evid Based Complementary Altern Med. 2017;22(1):75–80.
Rose S. Medical student education in the time of COVID-19. JAMA. 2020:323(21):2131-2.
Pei L & Wu H. Does online learning work better than offline learning in undergraduate medical education? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Med Educ Online. 2019;24:1. doi: 10.1080/10872981.2019.1666538
Moore S, Barbour R, Ngo H, Sinclair C et al. Determining the feasibility and effectiveness of brief online mindfulness training for rural medical students: a pilot study. BMC Med Educ. 2020;20:104.
Danilewitz M, Koszycki D, Maclean H, Sanchez-Campos M et al. Feasibility and effectiveness of an online mindfulness meditation program for medical students. Can Med Educ J. 2018;9(4).
Almarzooq Z, Lopes M, Kochar A. Virtual learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A disruptive technology in graduate medical education. Journal of the American College of Cardiology. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2020.04.015.
Playford D, Nicholson A, Riley G, Puddey I. Longitudinal rural clerkships: increased likelihood of more remote rural medical practice following graduation. BMC Med Educ. 2015 Mar 21;15:55. doi: 10.1186/s12909-015-0332-3.
Dobkin PL, Hutchinson TA. Teaching mindfulness in medical school: where
are we now and where are we going? Med Educ. 2013. Aug;47(8):768-79.
Schei E. , Fuks A., and Boudreau J.D. Reflection in medical education: intellectual humility, discovery, and know-how. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy. 2019;22: 167-178.
Hutchinson TA, Smilovitch M. Chapter 7, Experiential learning and reflection to support professionalism and professional identity formation. In: Cruess RL, Cruess SR, Steinert Y (eds). Teaching Medical Professionalism. Supporting the Development of a Professional Identity. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2016. p. 97-112.