Exploring medical students’ perspectives on online education in medical education

Aim: Medical education has traditionally been a face-to-face and hands-on field of education. Recently, the development of educational technologies, epidemics, and disasters have made it necessary to use online education method in addition to the traditional method in medical education. The purpose of this study is to evaluate medical students’ perspectives on online medical education. Methods: This study was carried out as a descriptive, cross-sectional and cohort research with the participation of 906 medical faculty students in Türkiye. Data were collected with “distance education evaluation scale for medical faculty students” scale. Descriptive statistics and significance tests (t-test, ANOVA, and Tukey tests) were used to analyze the data. Results: Medical students stated that online education was economically and time-efficient, that they had difficulty in following the courses, and that they could not manage patients with the knowledge and skills they would gain through online education. Conclusions: Medical students do not recommend that medical education should be done only through online education. However, it was evaluated that online education should also be utilized, in other words, it would be beneficial to develop hybrid education models.