Poncette Akira-Sebastian, Glauert Daniel Leon, Mosch Lina, Braune Katarina, Balzer Felix, Back David Alexander
Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health, Berlin, Germany.
Einstein Center Digital Future, Berlin, Germany.
J Med Internet Res. 2020 Oct 29;22(10):e22161. doi: 10.2196/22161.
Owing to an increase in digital technologies in health care, recently leveraged by the COVID-19 pandemic, physicians are required to use these technologies appropriately and to be familiar with their implications on patient care, the health system, and society. Therefore, medical students should be confronted with digital health during their medical education. However, corresponding teaching formats and concepts are still largely lacking in the medical curricula.
This study aims to introduce digital health as a curricular module at a German medical school and to identify undergraduate medical competencies in digital health and their suitable teaching methods.
We developed a 3-week curricular module on digital health for third-year medical students at a large German medical school, taking place for the first time in January 2020. Semistructured interviews with 5 digital health experts were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using an abductive approach. We obtained feedback from the participating students and lecturers of the module through a 17-item survey questionnaire.
The module received overall positive feedback from both students and lecturers who expressed the need for further digital health education and stated that the field is very important for clinical care and is underrepresented in the current medical curriculum. We extracted a detailed overview of digital health competencies, skills, and knowledge to teach the students from the expert interviews. They also contained suggestions for teaching methods and statements supporting the urgency of the implementation of digital health education in the mandatory curriculum.
An elective class seems to be a suitable format for the timely introduction of digital health education. However, a longitudinal implementation in the mandatory curriculum should be the goal. Beyond training future physicians in digital skills and teaching them digital health's ethical, legal, and social implications, the experience-based development of a critical digital health mindset with openness to innovation and the ability to assess ever-changing health technologies through a broad transdisciplinary approach to translate research into clinical routine seem more important. Therefore, the teaching of digital health should be as practice-based as possible and involve the educational cooperation of different institutions and academic disciplines.
由于医疗保健领域数字技术的增加，最近受新冠疫情的推动，医生需要恰当地使用这些技术，并熟悉它们对患者护理、卫生系统和社会的影响。因此，医学生在医学教育期间应该接触数字健康。然而，医学课程中仍然很大程度上缺乏相应的教学形式和理念。
本研究旨在将数字健康作为德国一所医学院校的课程模块引入，并确定本科医学生在数字健康方面的能力及其合适的教学方法。
我们为德国一所大型医学院校的三年级医学生开发了一个为期3周的数字健康课程模块，于2020年1月首次开课。对5位数字健康专家进行了半结构化访谈，记录、转录并采用归纳法进行分析。我们通过一份包含17个条目的调查问卷，获得了该模块参与学生和讲师的反馈。
该模块得到了学生和讲师的总体积极反馈，他们表示需要进一步开展数字健康教育，并指出该领域对临床护理非常重要，而在当前医学课程中未得到充分体现。我们从专家访谈中提取了数字健康能力、技能和知识的详细概述，用于教授学生。访谈中还包含了教学方法的建议以及支持在必修课程中实施数字健康教育紧迫性的陈述。
选修课似乎是适时引入数字健康教学的合适形式。然而，在必修课程中纵向实施才应是目标。除了培训未来医生的数字技能并教授他们数字健康的伦理、法律和社会影响之外，基于经验培养批判性数字健康思维模式，使其具有创新开放性，并能够通过广泛的跨学科方法评估不断变化的健康技术以将研究转化为临床常规，似乎更为重要。因此，数字健康教学应尽可能基于实践，并涉及不同机构和学术学科的教育合作。
