What is the Learning Unit about?

This learning unit focuses on telehealth and remote clinical reasoning, aiming to teach novice medical and nursing students how to manage consultations via audio and video.

How We Developed It!

A team of seven D-CREDO partners developed the unit, beginning with the transfer of ideas from the blueprint into a structured description template. This template captured the key concepts defined in the blueprint development deliverable and provided a clear overview of the unit’s design and outline, which was essential for the later transfer of content to the Moodle course platform.

During the process, it became clear that time management was a challenge, so a reduction in the number of activities was necessary to fit within the limited teaching time available. Once the main activities were selected, the team sourced videos and example telehealth consultations from the web. They also compiled additional resources based on literature from the rapid review, which would serve as reference works for students.

The team then developed a series of practical exercises designed to bring the concept of remote clinical reasoning closer to students. The first asynchronous part starts with a short video introduction to key telehealth concepts and a recorded video consultation. After that, students complete a reflection quiz that encourages them to consider the information presented and apply it in their own remote settings. These settings are then explored more directly through a clinical judgement exercise, in which case vignettes are presented and students must decide how to proceed with patient care.

A key focus is to determine whether a remote consultation is sufficient or to identify red flags that indicate the need for an in-person visit or emergency intervention. During the synchronous part, the cases are further enriched through role-play scenarios that place students in different perspectives relevant to remote clinical reasoning, including the patient, the physician, and an external observer, allowing them to veritably practice remote decision-making. All activities were developed, reviewed, and refined during weekly meetings before being transferred to Moodle for internal review. Following this process, the learning unit was finalised and prepared for piloting.

What did we learn?

For the next round of learning units development, it became important to identify lessons learned from the first two learning units. One challenge that we faced was to define clear, effective teaching phases while still offering enough hands-on training for students to understand remote clinical reasoning and the unique aspects of this type of consultation. Interestingly, the concept of telehealth varies across European countries, which creates specific limitations for healthcare professionals’ approach to learning and applying this knowledge in their local context. To strengthen our proposal, we chose to generalise the idea of clinical reasoning at distance and provide references to country-specific regulations that educators can use to tailor their courses.

In conclusion, this process illustrates the key stages involved in developing a learning unit, from initial concept to implementation. The aim was to create an effective and engaging approach for teaching clinical reasoning through telehealth. The insights gained were shared with the consortium and helped inform guidelines for the development of future learning units within D-CREDO.

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