The Role of Telemedicine and Globalization in Medical Education

Introduction

The current pandemic generated many effects on medical education and training. One of the most important effects was incorporating virtual learning to maintain academic activities while avoiding large gatherings. Telemedicine played a vital role in this situation by offering online courses and online clinical simulation activities. (Gonzalez-Urquijo et al., 2021)

The pandemic also affected how postgraduate students from medical residencies were trained, as clinics and hospitals were closed. Intervention or surgical procedures were reprogrammed, involving the skills and knowledge directly for trainees among their fields. Furthermore, most residents were part of the task force in the fight COVID-19. During this time, the use of telemedicine was crucial, and thanks to new technologies, medical students and residents stayed on board with their academic curriculums.

Higher-learning institutions have implemented virtual learning into their curriculum since it is cost-effective, accessible, and flexible in terms of time and location. The main interest in virtual education is the interactive communication it permits. (Dawd, 2016) Furthermore, another benefit of virtual learning is that medical students and residents can engage with renowned physicians from other counties, with larger pools of experienced tutors and geographic flexibility, as geographic influence has been shown to affect how physicians’ approach common problems; therefore, taking education into a more technical and globalized level. (Porpiglia et al., 2020)

Globalization is the process by which ideas, goods, and services spread throughout the world. It is now accepted that this force is essential for the contemporary continents. (Prideaux, 2019) Medical education has not been immune from the pressures of globalization. In the past, the model used for training was the “Apprenticeship Model.” Medical education evolved by implementing the process and product-based models, transforming these models into outcome-based or competency-based models. (Gondal, 2019) Nowadays, there is a paradigm shift in medical education due to technological advances, such as the adoption of online learning. Given the accessibility of these new technologies and the lack of academics with high-level expertise in some fields, in many countries, we need to explore how best to use our scarce resources to have the most significant possible impact regarding the preparation of health professionals such that they can make the best possible use of available informatics technologies to gain knowledge from renown experts in the field. (Hovenga, 2004)

Global challenges include diverse undergraduate and postgraduate education standards, varied clinical practice contexts, variation in disease patterns, various ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds, and language barriers. (Gondal, 2019)

This chapter aims to bring to the fore cutting-edge research on how globalization is changing medical education by e-learning, remote simulation, and new emerging technologies. In particular, the authors wish to contribute to critical thinking about the conceptualization, investigation, and theorization of how medical education is changing and how medical schools and residency programs in different countries are being transformed according to health and educational needs. In this chapter, we reviewed telemedicine and remote simulation and how globalization plays an essential role on it.