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How Are Alternative Clinical Placements Performed Compared to Traditional Clinical Placements During the COVID-19 Pandemic? Sought Through a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

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Abstract

Clinical placement is the essential method of learning in health professions education, but it has been the most disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Institutions of higher education resorted to alternative learning such as telehealth, simulations, and blended-learning for clinical placement to ensure that educational activities continue without delay. However, this raises questions about student competency and necessitates making up for missed in-person hours. A thorough investigation of the effectiveness of alternative clinical placement learning is required. A systematic searching was conducted on ten electronic databases, and the quality of the included articles was assessed using the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI). A meta-analysis was conducted by pooling studies with examination mark outcomes. Twenty-four articles were included in the systematic review and nine were included in the meta-analysis. The average MERSQI score for included studies is 11.15. Outcomes on student performance favor alternative placement, whereas perceived-based outcomes have mixed results and are slightly prone to traditional clinical placement. Meta-analysis indicates that alternative learning is either more effective than traditional clinical placement or at least on par with it. There is a discrepancy between perceived outcome and performance assessment regarding the utility of alternative learning to conventional clinical placement. Nonetheless, objective measurement outcomes and the meta-analysis support alternative learning as a reliable learning strategy for clinical education. Alternative learning for clinical placement experience can be improved further by adding more synchronous sessions, and implementing various learning methods, learning activities based on strong instructional design, and at least a short real-setting attachment.

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Availability of Data and Materials

All of the data come from published articles with appropriate citations. The authors contacted the original author for data that was not included in the published article, and have received their response and permission to use the data in our meta-analysis.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the personnel who provide us with the full text of the articles and additional data in order to carry out the systematic review and meta-analysis successfully. This study has been presented in the International Putra InnoCreative Carnival in Teaching and Learning (I-PICTL) 2023 and won a silver medal. This study received no funding. This review’s protocol is registered with INPLASY and is accessible at https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.37766/inplasy2023.5.0110.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Muhammad Hibatullah Romli

  2. Malaysian Research Institute on Ageing (MyAgeing), Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Muhammad Hibatullah Romli

  3. Medical Education Research and Innovation Unit (MERIU), Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Muhammad Hibatullah Romli, Siti Khadijah Adam & Safuraa Salihan

  4. Centre for Rehabilitation and Special Needs Studies, Occupational Therapy Programme, Faculty of Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 50300, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Farahiyah Wan Yunus

  5. Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia

    Siti Khadijah Adam & Safuraa Salihan

Authors
  1. Muhammad Hibatullah Romli
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  2. Farahiyah Wan Yunus
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  3. Siti Khadijah Adam
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  4. Safuraa Salihan
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Contributions

MHR’s major role was initiating the idea, involving in every aspect of searching, screening, disseminating, quality evaluation, extracting, and synthesizing the data, and writing the manuscript. FWY’s role was in screening and decision of included studies. SK’s and SS’s roles were in evaluating the quality and extracting the data. All authors involved in providing critical and significant intellectual feedback in writing the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the article for publication.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Muhammad Hibatullah Romli.

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Romli, M.H., Wan Yunus, F., Adam, S.K. et al. How Are Alternative Clinical Placements Performed Compared to Traditional Clinical Placements During the COVID-19 Pandemic? Sought Through a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Med.Sci.Educ. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-024-02037-5

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