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Online Clinical Briefing for Radiologic Technology Students in Covid-19 Pandemic Outbreak: Efficiency, Application, and Feedback of Students

Authors Nguyen TT , Nguyen TV, Hoang NT , Ha TH, Ton TNA 

Received 12 August 2022

Accepted for publication 3 November 2022

Published 10 November 2022 Volume 2022:13 Pages 1375—1379

DOI https://doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S386007

Checked for plagiarism Yes

Review by Single anonymous peer review

Peer reviewer comments 2

Editor who approved publication: Dr Md Anwarul Azim Majumder



Thanh Thao Nguyen, Thao Van Nguyen, Ngoc Thanh Hoang, Thi Hien Ha, That Nam Anh Ton

Department of Radiology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University, Hue, Vietnam

Correspondence: Thanh Thao Nguyen, Department of Radiology, University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University, Hue, 53000, Vietnam, Email [email protected]

Objective: To evaluate students’ satisfaction and efficacy of online clinical briefing for radiologic technology students. The study aimed to evaluate the efficiency, the possibility of application, and students’ feedback with the new form of clinical briefing during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 120 full-time radiologic technology students after participating in online clinical briefing sessions at the Department of Radiology, Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital. This training approach was implemented for students from April to July 2021. During the briefing, participants were asked to discuss on cases that were prepared by the previous on-duty nightshift students with the consultant of the senior staff. The discussion focused on the technical aspects, challenges, and clinical implementation of each technique. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the responses of students using the Likert scale (1. Complete disagree, 2. Disagree, 3. Satisfy, 4. Partial agree, 5. Complete agree).
Results: Our findings show that 76.5% of students were very satisfied and/or satisfied with the online clinical briefing. In particular, the mean score for satisfaction with teaching resources and platforms, and assessment tools were 4.21; less fear in giving feedback than on-site briefings were 3.57; satisfaction with faculty accessibility and availability in giving feedback as well as answering questions for students was 4.29; satisfaction with student’s performance and final grade was 3.55. 94.2% of students were willing to continue studying online during the COVID-19 breakout or similar circumstances.
Conclusion: Online clinical briefing is an appropriate teaching approach during a prolonged COVID-19 breakout. However, it cannot completely replace traditional teaching methods in providing essential clinical skills for radiologic technology students due to the unique characteristics of medicine and medical imaging teaching which require a substantial amount of clinical practice.

Keywords: online clinical briefing, radiologic technologist students, satisfaction

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic began in China in 2019 and rapidly spread to throughout the world.1 Under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has become the new normal in many medical and health science universities worldwide.2,3 While online learning is a useful tool for many subspecialties, its efficacy in health science, especially in medical subspecialties which require a great amount of practice such as surgery, orthopedics, anesthesia, and radiologic technology is still arguable.4 The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed medical education in an unprecedented way.5–7 Traditional hospital placement becomes impractical during outbreak waves of the virus. Many universities worldwide have moved to online teaching after the pandemic outbreak.8,9 Satisfaction with online learning is an important aspect of successful educational processes.9 Our study aimed to evaluate students’ satisfaction and efficacy of online clinical briefing for radiologic technology students during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 120 full-time radiologic technology students after participating in online clinical briefing sessions at the Department of Radiology, Hue University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital. This training approach was implemented for students from April to July 2021. During the briefing, participants were asked to discuss on cases that were prepared by the previous night shift on-duty students with the consultant of the senior staff. The discussion focused on the technical aspects, challenges, and clinical implementation of each technique. Students’ performance was evaluated using Bloom’s Taxonomy.10 Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the responses of students using the Likert scale (1. Complete disagree, 2. Disagree, 3. Satisfy, 4. Partial agree, 5. Completely agree). The study was approved by the Ethics committee of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Hue University. All participants gave consent to participate.

Results

Our findings show that 76.5% of students were very satisfied and/or satisfied with the online clinical briefing. In particular, the mean score for satisfaction with teaching resources and platforms, and assessment tools were 4.21; less fear in giving feedback than on-site briefings was 3.57; satisfaction with faculty accessibility and availability in giving feedback as well as answering questions for students was 4.29; satisfaction with student’s performance and final grade was 3.55. 94.2% of students were willing to continue studying online under the COVID-19 breakout or similar circumstances (Table 1). There is a statistically significant improvement in students’ performance, especially in students’ understanding of various aspects of the radiologic techniques (Table 2). Our results show that the main reasons for the favor of online clinical briefing are the safety concerns during COVID-19 pandemics, the ability to repeat the recorded lectures, the reduction in time and cost for studying, the interactive nature of the online class, and the proactive in self arrange of the studying time (Figure 1). On the other hand, our survey also shows that the online briefing session can be compromised by different factors such as the facilities, the difficulty in teamwork, and the difficulty in practice online (Figure 2).

Table 1 Student Experience of the Online Clinical Briefing Sessions (n=120)

Table 2 Pre-Test and Post-Test for Online Clinical Briefing Sessions (n=120) (Bloom’s Taxonomy: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create

Figure 1 Reasons drive online clinical briefings effectively under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figure 2 List of difficulties in attending online clinical briefings.

Discussion

Radiologic technology is a specialty that requires a substantial amount of training, especially training placement in clinical practice. Clinical experience is of utmost importance for students to be successful in their future work.11,12 Students can obtain clinical skills through various resources, varying from clinical placement to simulation with AI enhancement.13–17 Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2019, clinical placement becomes impractical in many universities due to excessive pandemic control policies.3,4 Therefore online teaching is an optimal alternative solution during the pandemic outbreak.5,9 Our study reveals important aspects of online clinical briefing for radiologic technology students. The results proved that online clinical briefing can be a problem solving for other future pandemics outbreaks.

Conclusion

The online clinical briefing is an appropriate teaching method for radiologic technology students. The feedback from the students was overall positive. The efficacy of the method was good. This can be an alternative teaching method for medical universities during COVID-19 outbreaks.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training through Grant CT.2019.02.05.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in relation to this work.

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