Faculty Collaboration Database

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on sleep medicine fellowship telemedicine training: a follow-up survey of program directors. J Clin Sleep Med 2024 Feb 01;20(2):201-210

Date

09/28/2023

Pubmed ID

37767791

Pubmed Central ID

PMC10835784

DOI

10.5664/jcsm.10828

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85184138930 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)

Abstract

STUDY OBJECTIVES: Our 2019 survey of sleep medicine fellowship program directors (PDs) indicated that fellows' contact with telemedicine was limited. Within months, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic significantly impacted the field. This survey describes fellows' telemedicine exposure, their PDs' attitudes toward it, and their formalized telemedicine training during the pandemic's third year.

METHODS: A 33-item SurveyMonkey questionnaire was developed. Many quantitative (Likert scale) items were identical to items on the 2019 survey for direct comparison. An open-ended question was added for qualitative analyses. All 91 sleep medicine fellowship PDs were invited to participate. The SurveyMonkey platform provided quantitative item descriptive statistics. Qualitative data underwent thematic analyses using codebook methodology.

RESULTS: Forty (97.5%) PDs indicated their program offers a telemedicine experience. Thirty-two (80%) PDs observed at least a 10% increase in sleep fellows' telemedicine encounters compared with prepandemic times. Although 27 (67.5%) PDs agreed that a national telemedicine curriculum could be useful, 8 (20%) of them offer a sleep telemedicine curriculum. Qualitative feedback revealed diverging attitudes toward telemedicine's place in sleep medicine practice, fellowship training, and the utility of a national curriculum.

CONCLUSIONS: Sleep telemedicine utilization during fellowship training was markedly higher on this 2022 survey (97.5%) compared with a similar 2019 survey (33.3%), and most PDs agreed a standardized curriculum could be useful. However, relatively few programs offer formalized telemedicine training. These findings imply that, while most sleep medicine fellows participate in telemedicine, they lack the formalized training that may optimize their utilization of the medium in their postfellowship careers.

CITATION: Fields BG, Kaur K, Dholakia S, Ioachimescu O. The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on sleep medicine fellowship telemedicine training: a follow-up survey of program directors. J Clin Sleep Med. 2024;20(2):201-210.

Author List

Fields BG, Kaur K, Dholakia S, Ioachimescu O

Author

Octavian C. Ioachimescu MD, PhD Vice Chair, Director, Professor in the Medicine department at Medical College of Wisconsin

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Curriculum
Education, Medical, Graduate
Fellowships and Scholarships
Follow-Up Studies
Humans
Pandemics
Sleep
Surveys and Questionnaires