The importance of telemedicine in patient–physician communication skills development in the time of the Covid 19 pandemic

Abstract

The Covid 19 pandemic has brought a dramatic drop in personal patient–physician encounters. On evaluating the situation, it turns out that in the long run online health care activities including online consultations and telemedicine would gain increasing importance. Successful patient–physician communication is essential in the process of healing, and medical students need to be properly prepared for it. An effective method for providing this kind of preparation is involving actor-patients in the simulation-based communication skills development, which takes place in simulation labs providing an authentic setting for the activity. As a consequence of the pandemic, several forms of health care communication moved into the online space and online education was introduced, which sheds new light both on the interactions to be taught and the methods to be used in teaching simulated communication. Simulation-based communication skills development involving professional actors has been conducted at the University Medical School of Pécs, Hungary since 2016. As a result of the restrictive measures aiming at slowing down the spread of the pandemic, the training has been conducted in the form of electronic distance learning since 23 March 2020. Simulation-based medical communication training moved to the Microsoft Teams surface, which made it necessary to revisit the syllabus and methods. The aim of this paper is to present the authors’ own experience and the international trends by comparing on-site and on-line simulation exercises. Based on students’ feedback and the partial assessment of the video-recorded teaching sessions, it seems clear that the simulation exercises performed on-line were successful and could ensure the development of the students’
communication skills with regards to telemedicine.