Distant surgical teaching during COVID-19 - A pilot study on final year medical students.

Introduction: Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, all on-site undergraduate medical teaching activities in Hong Kong have been suspended. A new web-based surgical skills learning (WSSL) for basic surgical skills training that were normally taught face-to-face was developed.

Methodology: Basic surgical skills were taught with normal face-to-face tutorial to 30 final year medical students prior to the outbreak. The same group of students were invited to join the online WSSL using Zoom. Evaluation of WSSL was performed by a standardized questionnaire.

Results: Thirty final year medical students (16 female, 14 male students) were recruited into the study. Median age was 23 (range 22-24). Most of them believed that WSSL is easy to follow. When compared to face-to-face teaching. Most students (N = 22, 73.4%) felt that WSSL was just as difficult/easy as conventional teaching for learning instrumental knots. Students were asked to evaluate WSSL by using a Likert scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being highly recommended). Twelve (40%) students highly recommended WSSL (Score 9 to 10), 15 students (50%) slightly recommended WSSL (Score 6-8).

Conclusion: Web-based surgical skills learning is a feasible alternative for face-to-face surgical skills teaching.