Teaching practical histopathology during COVID-19 pandemic: A remote education model for students

10.17605/OSF.IO/WRP9A

 

Rivera A, Fernandez-Lopez I, Reyes-Parra A, Orallo-Martinez J, Barbosa-Martin C, Del Cañizo JF. Teaching practical histopathology during COVID-19 pandemic: A remote education model for students. Am J Med Surg. 2021, June. 4(3). 1-7

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Abstract:

Objectives: Unfortunately, COVID-19 pandemic has limited physical activities, leading to shut education faculties, including clinical clerkships for medical students. This compromises particularly interactive learning such as pathology education and science researching.

The present study aims to describe a remote, fast, low-cost and reproducible learning method for histological score application and pathology learning in students.

Methods: Eight medical students with no previous training in histopathology were instructed online in a two-step learning process consisting in a first stage of streaming self-regulating learning and a second stage of computer assisted instruction using animated samples. Every student analyzed twice 32 histological samples of liver in different degrees of ischemic damage using a proposed score and a gold standard score. These results were compared to the ones obtained by two experts in pathology using intraclass correlation coefficient.

Results: Intra class correlation coefficient between each group was 0.587 for single measures and 0.919 for average measures (P=0,001). The concordance between both scores measured by the experts was 0.772 for single measures and 0.872 for average measures (p = 0.001), with similar results when the comparison was made by the students.

Conclusions: The described learning method capacitates a group of students for application and validation of an histological score in a low time-consuming process with the sole equipment of a computer and no need of physical presence.

 

Key Words: Remote learning, medical education