Disclosures: Theodora L. Swenson, MD: No financial relationships or conflicts of interest

Objective: To create a hybrid (virtual and in-person) curriculum for medical students rotating within the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PM&R) Department in order to help students understand the scope of PM&R and increase their comfort level with physical exam skills relevant to PM&R while maximizing their learning.

Design: We performed a literature review to better understand the landscape of virtual medical school education (4-7). Based on this review, we proposed a hybrid virtual and in-person curriculum, which included virtual didactics, videos, textbook readings, and podcasts. Pre-rotation and post-rotation surveys were created to evaluate the rotation.Setting : n/aParticipants : A medical student rotating on the brain injury inpatient service.

Interventions: We piloted our proposed hybrid 2-week curriculum with the first week virtual and the second week in-person.

Main Outcome Measures: To assess the students’ understanding of the scope of PM&R, perceived comfort with performing skills relevant to PM&R such as manual muscle testing, and overall experience with hybrid virtual and in-person learning.

Results: The student’s comfort with PM&R history taking, manual muscle testing, and presenting a patient on rounds improved from “very” to “mildly uncomfortable” on pre-course survey to “mildly comfortable” on the post-course survey. We also sought direct student feedback from our pilot to be incorporated into future iterations of the PM&R clerkship.Conclusions: In March 2020, the Association of American Medical Colleges recommended that clinical rotations be suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many medical schools were forced to adapt to new learning environments (3). Using virtual technologies can help supplement traditional learning and enhance medical education even beyond the current pandemic. By supplementing traditional in-person teaching with virtual learning, we can more effectively improve medical students’ clinical reasoning and facilitate self-directed learning.

Level of Evidence: Level V

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PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/creation-of-a-hybrid-virtual-and-in-person-pmr-medical-student-curriculum/