The Effect of Blended Learning in Covid-19 Pandemic with the Achievement of Internal Medicine Stage Competencies at the Clerkship Program of the Faculty of Medicine UII

Background The Covid-19 pandemic had an impact on all aspects of life including medical education at the Faculty of Medicine Universitas Islam Indonesia. Clinical learning was modified into combination of online and offline learning or blended learning. This study aimed to see the learning outcomes of students at the Internal Medicine stage between those who underwent conventional learning i.e. 11 weeks full of offline education in the hospital and those who underwent blended learning, namely 4 weeks online followed by 7 weeks offline. Method This study was a case control study that aimed to compare the competency attainment of the Internal Medicine stage in a group of students who underwent blended learning versus those who underwent full offline learning. Competency achievement was seen from assessment scores (Mini-Clinical Evaluation Exercise (Mini-CEx), Direct Observation of Procedural Skills (DOPS), clinical tutorials, journal reading, case reflection, Objective Structured Long Examination Record (OSLER), written test scores and final scores. The statistical analysis used was descriptive analysis and the Mann Whitney sample test. The difference was significant if p <0.05. This study had received ethical clearance from the Ethics Committee of FK UII. Result Initially we selected 30 students for each group, but data that met the inclusion criteria were obtained for 13 students who underwent blended learning and 18 students who had an offline stage. The data that were excluded were incomplete assessment data. The study was conducted in December 2020 January 2021. There were significant differences in the case reflection scores, written examinations and final scores between the two groups with a p value < 0.05 in sequence; 0.00, 0.03, and 0.001. Meanwhile, the scores for Mini-CEx, DOPS, journal reading, clinical tutorial, and OSLER were not significantly different. The mean value obtained by the offline group was better than the blended learning group. Conclusions The competency achievement shown by the assessment results in the blended learning method group was lower than the offline method group for the medical professional education program during the Covid-19 pandemic.