Advantages and Challenges of Virtual Outpatient Education: A Review Article

This study reviews articles published in the last two decades to determine the pros and cons of virtual outpatient education for undergraduate medical students and residents. A review of articles published between 2001 and 2021 in PubMed, Scopus, ERIC, and google scholar databases. Keywords for this search were: Ambulatory care/Outpatient clinics and education, and medical/internship and residency. The emphasis of this study was on the implementation of any kind of E-learning in outpatient clinics. Out of 5100 in the initial monitoring, 168 articles were reviewed based on the full text. Finally, information on 11 articles was extracted. Results were summarized in 4 areas: methods and tools used in e-learning, benefits of e-learning, challenges and limitations of e-learning, and student support. The main methods used were telemedicine via video conferencing and telephone calls, especially for residents. Other were virtual clinics with a simulated patient, as well as online educational modules. The main preponderances were: increasing knowledge and skills of telemedicine, improving medical knowledge and skills, access to educational resources even during patients visit, the possibility of learning at any time and place, and betterment of the quality of care. The main challenges were lack of technological literacy and lack of Internet access for some patients, time-consuming entry of patient information for students, reduction of clinical experiences, the unfeasibility of acquiring full skills in performing physical examinations, or some technical and procedural skills and hardware/software technological problems. Regarding student support, the main activity includes holding orientation sessions on new approaches for trainees. Due to the urgency of using virtual outpatient education in the corona era, it is predicted that in the post-corona era, we will see a tendency to use this method by stakeholders. Certainly, citing the results of original articles and reviewing them, similar to the present study, can make it possible to implement qualified E-learning innovation in clinics with quality in the future.