Efficiency of simulation in combination with independent online learning within the framework of "EyesiNet" in ophthalmology education

Abstract

Purpose : Ophthalmoscopy is part of the medical curriculum, but the teaching of medical contents is often unsatisfactory because there is no systematic learning of pathologies and their treatment options; instead of that healthy students examine each other. For this reason, we have developed a project to improve teaching at the Medical Faculty of the JWG University of Frankfurt/Main, which offers the opportunity to train ophthalmoscopically using a newly developed online platform (EyesiNet) in addition to simulator training. Defined learning contents are reproducible and made available to everyone equally.
The aim was to test the efficiency of the online platform EyesiNet in combination with the simulation of direct (Eyesi Direct) and indirect (Eyesi Indirect) ophthalmoscopy.

Methods :
At the beginning of the internship and on the last day of the internship, the students worked on cases in Eyesi Direct and Indirect. In the meantime, they were able to deal with the topic in the web-based EyesiNet on a voluntary basis. Results were scored on first and last day and compared to each other

Results :
Eyesi Direct: With p=0.29, both groups had the same starting conditions and did not have significantly different results in case processing on the first day of the internship. In the group of non-trainees (n=54), a significant improvement in simulator training was observed on the last day of the practical training with p= 0.02, but with a small effect size of 0.1. Among the trainees (n=32), a highly significant improvement with an effect size of 0.3 was observed in the Wilcoxan Matched Pair Test with p= 0.0004.
Eyesi Indirect: Both groups had no significant difference in the results in the Eyesi Indirect test at the beginning of the training period (p= 0.10). 32 trainees performed unequivocally (but not significantly) better than 54 non-trainees.

Conclusions : The online platform EyesiNet impressively supports the learning of the most important disease patterns; the skills of direct ophthalmoscopy can be learned much faster than those of indirect ophthalmoscopy; a 3 days period is obviously way too short for the learning process. The online platform EyesiNet substentially accellerates the learning curve in ophthalmology - why not in other subspecialities, too? Home office conditions for sure take extra profit from such a modern tool.

This is a 2021 ARVO Annual Meeting abstract.