Use of telemedicine in undergraduate teaching of surgery

Telemedicine as an undergraduate teaching method was evaluated by exposing medical students to outpatient videoconferencing. Forty clinical students on a 10-week surgical rotation participated in the study. Telemedicine sessions involved videoconferencing from the general surgical outpatient department located in a sister hospital 8 km away, using a roll-about system connected by ISDN at 384 kbit/s. A questionnaire was used to assess the quality of time spent and educational information obtained by the students. On a scale of 0-10, the students gave an overall rating of 9.7 for outpatient teaching using telemedicine. All 40 students indicated a willingness to return for similar teaching sessions. Even though the results were encouraging, an objective assessment of the knowledge gained by the students is required before the inclusion of this teaching technique in an existing medical curriculum can be recommended unequivocally.