Computer-based simulation by emergency medicine resident-educator for medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Today, residents in all disciplines are expected to be involved in not just educating themselves but in the education of others and peers as well. They are involved in a wide spectrum of teaching and instruction techniques such as case presentations, lectures, practical hands-on teaching, bedside clinical tutorials, informal discussions and simulation-based training. Simulation-based teaching has been playing an increasingly important role in both residency training as well as medical school curricula. In particular, it appeals to adult learners as it very task-driven and task-oriented, it allows for constant active engagement during role-playing in simulated scenarios and enables repetitive practice until a certain level of mastery or competency is achieved. The SingHealth residents training in emergency medicine have been collaborating with and engaging medical students from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, as the two entities for a common Academic Medical Center. They share many collaborative projects and activities, research as well as educational training programmes. However, with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, both face-to-face medical teaching as well as simulation-based teaching proved to be challenging. One alternative is to move these teaching collaborations and programmes onto the online platform. This study describes the experience of emergency medicine resident-educators who conducted emergency medicine computer-based simulations (CBS) in collaboration with a group of medical students from the Duke-NUS Emergency Medicine Student Interest Group during the COVID-19 pandemic.