Evaluation of an Online Telemedicine Course Through Facebook

Health professionals with adequate training are required to provide quality remote care. There are few telemedicine and telehealth training programs for doctors and medical students. On the other hand, the use of social networks (Facebook and Twitter) as a medical education tool is becoming frequent. However, there is a lack of conclusive evidence in terms of its effectiveness. The objective of the present study is to develop and evaluate a telemedicine course for resident doctors through Facebook and compare it with one through Moodle. A randomized, triple-blind, parallel block controlled trial will be conducted that tests the effectiveness of an educational intervention through Facebook compared to another control intervention using Moodle. Intervention training is a telemedicine course focused on teleconsultation provided through Facebook. Control training is the same educational content but through Moodle. The level of telemedicine knowledge of the participants before and after the intervention will be evaluated. The inferential analysis to see the association between the variables of interest will be carried out by Student's T tests or analysis of variance (ANOVA). If potential confounding factors were found, the variable will be adjusted through linear regression. The pre and post intervention analysis will be carried out with student t or wilcoxon rank test according to the normality of the data. Resident doctors who receive the telemedicine course through Facebook are expected to have a greater knowledge gain than those who take the course through Moodle.

Main Objective:

Develop and evaluate a telemedicine course for resident doctors through Facebook and compare it with one through Moodle.

Study Design:

A randomized, triple-blind, parallel block controlled trial will be conducted that tests the effectiveness of an educational intervention through Facebook compared to another control intervention using Moodle. Intervention training is a telemedicine course focused on teleconsultation provided through Facebook. Control training is the same educational content but through Moodle. The level of telemedicine knowledge of the participants before and after the intervention will be evaluated. In addition, at the end of the intervention the level of satisfaction of the participants will be evaluated.

Population:

Resident doctors of the Faculty of Medicine of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

Sample:

In a previous study, the response within each group of subjects was normally distributed with a standard deviation of 2.62. If the true difference in the experimental and control means is 3, the investigators will have to study 13 experimental subjects and 13 control subjects to be able to reject the null hypothesis that the population means of the experimental and control groups are equal with the probability (power) 0.8. The probability of Type I error associated with this test of this null hypothesis is 0.05. Then the investigators consider the 30% follow-up loss rate, according to previous reports, our final sample size being 38 people, therefore our intervention and control group will be made up of 19 people each. This is the minimum sample size needed; however, a larger number improves the power of the study.

Group assignment:

Participants will be randomly assigned to the intervention or control training by simple random assignment (random numbers generated by computer). Once the assigned group of each participant has been determined, they will be given access to the course content on their respective platforms.

Ethical considerations:

This project will be guided by the principles of scientific integrity. The project was submitted to the Institutional Committee of Research Ethics of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia for evaluation and approval. The content of the classes (educational videos) will be based on specialized scientific literature and current technical standards. In the end of the course, participants will have received telemedicine training as part of their curriculum and they will increase their professional skills. They will not be offered any additional incentive. When enrolling in the course, participants will be informed of the research objectives and procedures. Resident doctors will accept the use of their data generated by the course for the purpose of this study voluntarily

Eligibility Criteria:
Inclusion Criteria:

* Physician enrolled in the resident program of Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, who has passed the first year of residence.
* Motivation to learn telemedicine and participate in educational activities during the intervention.
* Access to the internet through a computer or mobile device during the intervention of the study.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Resident doctors who have had some type of training in e-Health, telemedicine or telehealth.
* Rotating doctors from other national or foreign universities.