Abstract Details

The COVID-19 pandemic and the global effort to minimize the spread of infection spurred a necessary growth to the already expanding, yet relatively new application of teleneurology. Teleneurology is expected to continue to grow post-pandemic. However, currently there is no commonly accepted method to educate trainees in this novel way of practicing neurology.

Prior to launching a teleneurology curriculum, residents completed an anonymous, voluntary survey that assessed trainees’ views on teleneurology.

The survey was completed by 22 neurology residents from all years of training. While trainees felt comfortable taking an HPI via teleneurology compared to in-person visits (73%), most did not feel confident performing the neurological exam remotely (86%). Most trainees perceived the virtual neurological exam to be less comprehensive and accurate compared to an in-person exam (95%). Many were concerned about the ability to accurately diagnose a neurologic disorder through teleneurology visits compared to in-person visits (41%). Overall, most residents (86%) desired more training on performing effective teleneurology visits and felt that teleneurology should have an important role after the pandemic.  Residents felt a variety of modalities would help them learn about teleneurology: didactics with slides (25%), live demonstration of a virtual encounter (25%), simulated experience (23%), simply starting with live patients (23%), and articles/other reading material (4%).

We demonstrate that there is a high level of interest among trainees, as well as lack of comfort, with teleneurology, especially surrounding the virtual neurological examination. The trainees also showed interest in multiple modalities of learning, in particular those in which there are opportunities for active interaction with audience. There was also an expectation that teleneurology will play a larger role in the future. Given this unmet educational demand, we developed a novel teleneurology curriculum.