Elsevier

World Neurosurgery

Volume 166, October 2022, Pages e253-e262
World Neurosurgery

Original Article
Evaluation of a Role for Virtual Neurosurgical Education for Medical Students Over 2 Years of a Global Pandemic

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2022.06.146Get rights and content

Background

Subinternships are critical experiences for medical students applying into neurosurgery to acquire knowledge of the field and network with colleagues. During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, in-person rotations were suspended for 2020 and reduced for 2021. In 2020, our department developed a neurosurgical course to address this need. The course was continued in 2021, enabling assessment of student perceptions as the pandemic progresses.

Methods

The virtual course consisted of weekly 1-hour seminars over a 3- to 4-month period. Prior to starting, participants were sent a comprehensive survey assessing their backgrounds, experiences, and confidences in core concepts across neurosurgical subdisciplines. Participants also completed postcourse surveys assessing the course's value and their confidence in the same topics. Responses from students completing both precourse and postcourse surveys were included, analyzed in pairwise fashion, and compared across course years.

Results

Students shared similar baseline characteristics in terms of demographics, educational background, and exposure to neurosurgery prior to the course. In the 2020 and 2021 cohorts, quality ratings for presentations were favorable for all seminars, and participants reported significantly increased confidence in core topics across all neurosurgical disciplines after the course (2020: 3.36 ± 0.26, P < 0.0001; 2021: 3.56 ± 0.93, P = 0.005). Most participants felt the course would remain useful following the pandemic in both the 2020 (96.9%) and 2021 (100.0%) cohorts.

Conclusions

Survey results suggest that the course adds value for students seeking a basic didactic curriculum to supplement their education, and perhaps, an online curriculum for medical students would still be beneficial going forward as in-person rotations resume.

Introduction

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic continues to present daily challenges to the safe and effective delivery of medical education. Many medical schools have adapted to these conditions by providing didactic lectures and seminars in a virtual format in an effort to reduce viral spread while preserving the lessons obtained from structured curricula. For students pursuing competitive surgical subspecialties, this transition to virtual medical education has presented additional challenges, as these fields have traditionally embraced visiting student externships as a means of providing students with fundamental knowledge of the field and facilitating networking connections with future colleagues.1 These opportunities, however, have been drastically limited for the past 2 residency application cycles.

In April 2020, the Society of Neurological Surgeons recommended deferral of all medical student external rotations for the 2020–2021 academic year.2 These recommendations were revised for the 2021–2022 academic year to allow 1 external rotation per medical student.3 Given the ongoing restrictions on these critical learning opportunities for medical students, we recognized the need for a virtual neurosurgical educational resource for current and future residency applicants.4, 5, 6 Accordingly, we designed a structured didactic course that aimed to provide foundational knowledge in each neurosurgical subdiscipline that subinterns would be expected to know, as well as opportunities for interactions between students, faculty, and residents prior to interviews. This course first debuted in June 2020 and received highly positive feedback based on participant survey responses.7 Given these findings and in the setting of ongoing restrictions impacting external rotation opportunities, this course was modified based on student feedback and offered again starting in June 2021.

The primary intention of this study was to compare the effectiveness of a virtual neurosurgery course for medical students across student cohorts and develop new insights into the utility and relevance of the virtual didactic format in the changing landscape of neurosurgical education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Section snippets

Methods

The 2020 and 2021 virtual neurosurgery courses consisted of 1-hour seminars that were conducted weekly or biweekly over a 3- to 4-month period. The virtual course was hosted remotely on the Zoom video conferencing platform for both years. Students participating live were able to pose questions to faculty through chat or open discussion. After each live didactic seminar was completed, a recording of the session was posted online for on-demand viewing. All recorded sessions from the 2021 didactic

Demographics

In 2020, an average of 82 students participated live in each weekly lecture (range: 41–150), with 32 participants completing both the precourse and postcourse surveys. In 2021, an average of 32 students participated live in each lecture (range: 16–52), with 8 students completing both surveys. Baseline characteristics of the 2020 and 2021 respondents did not differ significantly in any of the metrics collected, including age, gender, stage of education, or degree of neurosurgical exposure prior

Perceptions of the Virtual Course and Cohort Comparisons

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial and continuing impact on multiple facets of healthcare and training, including medical practices,8 education,9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 residency interviewing,21 and subinternships.2,22 Efforts to create virtual resources for medical students to gain exposure to neurosurgery have been met with broad interest.15 The course put forth by the senior author included faculty-led didactic sessions in each neurosurgical subdiscipline along

Conclusions

In attempting to fill an educational gap identified during the COVID-19 pandemic, we observed that educational opportunities for medical students in neurosurgery vary widely and that significant challenges still remain for medical students seeking to acquire neurosurgical knowledge prior to their participation in subinternships or matching into the field. Our findings suggest that a virtual course adds persistent value for students seeking a free, basic didactic curriculum available in a

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Michael L. Martini: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Raj K. Shrivastava: Data curation, Writing – review & editing. Christopher P. Kellner: Data curation, Writing – review & editing. Peter F. Morgenstern: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.

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  • Cited by (0)

    Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare that the article content was composed in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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