P3.J189: Faculty Attitudes on Virtual Learning and Teaching in the Clinical Setting

Background: Virtual teaching is increasingly prevalent in medical education, a trend that was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, clinical medical education on the hospital wards has traditionally been conducted in person, often at the bedside. Most clinician-educators have received little to no formal training on ideal virtual teaching practices, and clinician-educator attitudes towards virtual education have never been formally assessed.
This study aims to investigate clinician-educator attitudes towards virtual education, both in their roles as educators and as continuing learners.

Methods: We designed an IRB-exempt, cross-sectional REDCap survey created based on cognitive interviews with local pediatric hospital medicine (PHM) clinician-educators. The survey focused on learning and teaching preferences based on participants’ role as learner, educator, or both. From March 2023 to April 2023, the survey was disseminated via email to PHM faculty through the American Academy of Pediatrics international PHM listserv. Survey participation was voluntary and without incentives. Descriptive statistics were performed on survey responses and comparative analyses applied based on respondents’ role, years in practice, and on educators’ frequency of virtual education.

Results: Thirty-seven faculty responded to the survey from 19 academic institutions across the US. Participants self-identify as learner, educator, or both; and educators were asked about their teaching experiences (Table 1).
Most participants prefer the convenience of virtual teaching but feel that it is less effective than in person learning, and no educators prefer to teach virtually (Figure 1). There are no significant differences in preference on virtual attendance, perception of ineffectiveness of virtual learning, or preference to teach in person when groups are compared based on their role (learner vs educator vs both, p-value 0.09->0.99), years of experience ( < 10 years vs > 10 years, p-value 0.27-0.61) or percentage of time they teach virtually ( < 50% vs > 50% of the time, p-value 0.33->0.99)

Conclusion: This experienced group of medical educators from multiple institutions primarily obtain their own education virtually and value its convenience. However, they rarely taught virtually, finding it to be less effective and less preferable to in person teaching. This disparity between respondents' comfort as virtual learners and their discomfort as virtual teachers identify an opportunity to improve clinical medical educators’ skills with virtual education. Our next step is to assess best practices in virtual medical education and develop educational sessions to improve virtual teaching skills.