Teleneurology Teaching Service at a Rural Regional Campus

Abstract

Regional rural medical school campuses offer many opportunities for medical students to gain more hands-on experience, have more direct interaction with attending physicians, and cultivate a deeper understanding of challenges and opportunities specific to rural medicine. Some specialty services such as neurology are not available at these small regional campuses, and telemedicine technology can be a valuable tool to address this need. We report the implementation of teleneurology stroke consultation services as part of the third-year neurology clerkship at a regional medical school campus. We analyzed daily clinical notes and student satisfaction surveys. Students saw many common and important presentations of cerebrovascular events. Students worked as part of a multi-disciplinary care team while following these patients through their hospital course with effective instruction provided by remote stroke neurologists. All students strongly agreed that telemedicine was a positive component of the clerkship. We  conclude that teleneurology is an effective way to provide inpatient neurology clinical exposure, especially when remote attendings have a strong screen presence and are enthusiastic about teaching. We believe these findings could be useful to other campuses considering similar teaching methods, as innovations in telemedicine continue to address challenges  in  medical education and clinical care. The authors have no conflicts of interest to report and the Baptist Health Madisonville Institutional Review Board found this study to be exempt.