Brennan-Pierce Ellen P, Stanton Susan G, Dunn Julie A
School of Biomedical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.
UCHealth North, Medical Center of the Rockies, Loveland, CO, USA.
Biomed Eng Educ. 2025 Jan;5(1):37-45. doi: 10.1007/s43683-024-00156-4. Epub 2024 Aug 12.
Clinical immersion programs provide opportunities for biomedical engineering (BME) students to observe the clinical environment and medical devices in use, often leading to the identification of unmet clinical needs. Due to hospital restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, in-person clinical immersion programs were generally not possible in summer 2020. Therefore, a six-week virtual clinical immersion program ran that summer. The program included meetings with guest clinicians and medical device sales representatives twice per week, and a group discussion held once per week. The meetings incorporated de-identified videos of medical procedures, clinician commentary of the videos, live video tours of hospital areas, clinician presentations, presentations and demonstrations by medical device sales representatives, and opportunities for discussions with these guests. The meetings were recorded and saved to create a Virtual Clinical Immersion Library. Pre and post program student self-assessment surveys showed significant increases in five ABET learning outcomes, two BME learning outcomes, and four program-specific learning outcomes. Post-graduation survey results of alumni from this program showed that all respondents had secured a job in the biomedical/engineering field or postgraduate education less than three months after graduation. These alumni are currently employed in the fields of biomedical products, healthcare, research and development, higher education, biotech, consulting, pharmaceutical, and other engineering. Overall, this virtual clinical immersion program filled a gap caused by COVID-19 pandemic closures and provided many benefits to the students that participated. The virtual program also provides an enduring library of video resources for current and future BME students.
临床沉浸式项目为生物医学工程（BME）专业的学生提供了观察临床环境和正在使用的医疗设备的机会，这往往能发现未被满足的临床需求。由于新冠疫情期间医院的限制，2020年夏天一般无法开展面对面的临床沉浸式项目。因此，那年夏天开展了一个为期六周的虚拟临床沉浸式项目。该项目包括每周与客座临床医生和医疗设备销售代表进行两次会面，以及每周举行一次小组讨论。这些会面包含经过去识别处理的医疗程序视频、临床医生对视频的评论、医院区域的实时视频参观、临床医生的演讲、医疗设备销售代表的展示和演示，以及与这些嘉宾进行讨论的机会。这些会面都被录制并保存下来，以创建一个虚拟临床沉浸式图书馆。项目前后的学生自我评估调查显示，在ABET的五项学习成果、两项BME学习成果以及四项特定于该项目的学习成果方面都有显著提高。该项目校友的毕业后续调查结果显示，所有受访者在毕业后不到三个月就在生物医学/工程领域找到了工作或继续接受研究生教育。这些校友目前受雇于生物医学产品、医疗保健、研发、高等教育、生物技术、咨询、制药和其他工程领域。总体而言，这个虚拟临床沉浸式项目填补了新冠疫情导致的关闭所造成的空白，并为参与的学生带来了诸多益处。这个虚拟项目还为当前和未来的BME学生提供了一个永久性的视频资源库。
