Bawadi Hiba, Shami Rula, El-Awaisi Alla, Al-Moslih Ayad, Abdul Rahim Hanan, Du Xiangyun, Moawad Joyce, Al-Jayyousi Ghadir Fakhri
Department of Human Nutrition, College of Health Sciences, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
Department of Public Health, College of Health Sciences, QU Health, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar.
Front Med (Lausanne). 2023 Jan 30;10:1107693. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1107693. eCollection 2023.
COVID-19 has imposed many shared limitations on medical and health education. Just like other health professions programs at most institutions, the Qatar University health cluster (QU Health) applied a containment approach and shifted all learning online, and onsite training was replaced by virtual internships (VIs) during the first wave of the pandemic. Our study aims to explore the challenges of virtual internships during the COVID-19 pandemic and their influence on the professional identity (PI) of the health cluster students from the College of Medicine, the College of Health Sciences, and the College of Pharmacy at Qatar University.
A qualitative approach was employed. In total, eight focus groups with students ( = 43) and 14 semi-structured interviews with clinical instructors from all the health cluster colleges were conducted. Transcripts were analyzed following the inductive approach.
The major challenges reported by students were mainly related to the lack of the required skills for navigating the VI, professional and social stressors, the nature of VIs and the quality of learning, technical and environmental issues, and the development of students' professional identity in an alternative internship environment. The challenges relating to the development of professional identity included: limited clinical (practical) experience, a lack of experience in fighting a pandemic, a lack of communication and feedback, and a lack of confidence in meeting the internship's goals. A model was constructed to represent these findings.
The findings are important in identifying the inevitable barriers to virtual learning for health professions students and provide a better understanding of how such challenges and different experiences would be affecting the development of their PI. Hence, students, instructors, and policymakers alike should strive to minimize these barriers. Since physical interactions and patient contact are indispensable components of clinical teaching, these extraordinary times demand innovations involving technology and simulation-based teaching. There is a need for more studies that are focused on determining and measuring the short- and long-term effects of the VI on students' PI development.
新冠疫情给医学与健康教育带来了诸多共同的限制。与大多数机构的其他健康专业项目一样，卡塔尔大学健康集群（QU Health）采取了防控措施，将所有学习活动转移到线上，在疫情第一波期间，现场培训被虚拟实习（VI）所取代。我们的研究旨在探讨新冠疫情期间虚拟实习的挑战及其对卡塔尔大学医学院、健康科学学院和药学院健康集群学生专业身份（PI）的影响。
采用定性研究方法。总共对学生进行了8个焦点小组访谈（n = 43），并对所有健康集群学院的临床教师进行了14次半结构化访谈。采用归纳法对访谈记录进行分析。
学生报告的主要挑战主要与缺乏进行虚拟实习所需的技能、专业和社会压力源、虚拟实习的性质和学习质量、技术和环境问题以及在替代实习环境中学生专业身份的发展有关。与专业身份发展相关的挑战包括：临床（实践）经验有限、缺乏应对疫情的经验、缺乏沟通和反馈以及对实现实习目标缺乏信心。构建了一个模型来呈现这些发现。
这些发现对于识别健康专业学生虚拟学习不可避免的障碍很重要，并有助于更好地理解此类挑战和不同经历将如何影响他们专业身份的发展。因此，学生、教师和政策制定者都应努力减少这些障碍。由于身体互动和患者接触是临床教学不可或缺的组成部分，在这些特殊时期需要涉及技术和基于模拟的教学创新。需要更多的研究来确定和衡量虚拟实习对学生专业身份发展的短期和长期影响。
