Using Technology to Meet the Challenges of Medical Education.

TLDR

Medical education is rapidly evolving due to changes in healthcare, physician roles, societal expectations, medical science, and pedagogy, with patient safety and ethical concerns driving a shift away from the traditional “see one, do one, teach one” model. The article aims to show how technology can support medical education by enhancing knowledge acquisition, decision making, perceptual variation, skill coordination, rare event practice, team training, and psychomotor skills. It reviews technologies such as podcasts, videos, flipped classrooms, mobile apps, video games, simulations, virtual reality, and wearable devices like Google Glass that can provide the infrastructure to meet future educational challenges.

Abstract

Medical education is rapidly changing, influenced by many factors including the changing health care environment, the changing role of the physician, altered societal expectations, rapidly changing medical science, and the diversity of pedagogical techniques. Changes in societal expectations put patient safety in the forefront, and raises the ethical issues of learning interactions and procedures on live patients, with the long-standing teaching method of "see one, do one, teach one" no longer acceptable. The educational goals of using technology in medical education include facilitating basic knowledge acquisition, improving decision making, enhancement of perceptual variation, improving skill coordination, practicing for rare or critical events, learning team training, and improving psychomotor skills. Different technologies can address these goals. Technologies such as podcasts and videos with flipped classrooms, mobile devices with apps, video games, simulations (part-time trainers, integrated simulators, virtual reality), and wearable devices (google glass) are some of the techniques available to address the changing educational environment. This article presents how the use of technologies can provide the infrastructure and basis for addressing many of the challenges in providing medical education for the future.