The Real-Time Virtual Support program helps physician residents feel more comfortable in rural practice.
That is one of the conclusions of a study published in the Canadian Medical Education Journal.
The RTVS Simulation program, a partnership between UBC Rural CPD and the RTVS program, brought simulations to rural resident teaching sites across British Columbia.
The interactive video-supported simulation sessions were remotely facilitated by an RTVS virtual physician with support from the Rural CPD team. These types of sessions are sometimes called “telesimulation”.
The RTVS peer program, administered by the Rural Coordination Centre of BC, connects on-the-ground rural clinicians with RTVS physicians over Zoom or phone. The RTVS pathways are staffed by friendly, compassionate physicians who can offer focused support in Emergency Medicine, Pediatrics, Maternity, Critical Care and Internal Medicine.
The feedback from the simulation sessions that took place from 2023 to 2024 was compelling. Family medicine residents found the program educational, felt it increased their confidence in managing sick patients, and made them more likely to want to pursue rural practice.
The research was led by Dr. Jeanne Macleod, a physician member of the RUDi (Rural Urgent Doctor in-aid) RTVS pathway. Its co-author was Dr. Frank Scheuermeyer and data for the study was collected by the Rural CPD RTVS Simulation team.
Of the residents who responded to the post-simulation survey:
- 81% felt more confident about rural practice knowing RTVS was available.
- 98% wanted to incorporate RTVS into future practice.
- 100% thought using RTVS could improve quality of patient care.
“Feedback that we collected for this study was clear—there was a lot of enthusiasm for simulation done through RTVS, and the majority of participants felt it increased their confidence in rural practice. More research is needed, but it points to RTVS being a great tool for recruitment of new-to-practice physicians to rural communities.”
The RTVS Simulation program offers two types of simulations:
- Supported: Your community or organization is in the process of coordinating a simulation which includes an RTVS component with a dedicated RTVS Provider scheduled to support the session.
- Coordinated: Your community or organization is interested in offering simulation education featuring an RTVS call, and you would like the support of the UBC Rural CPD team to coordinate the education.
RTVS Simulation is accredited and has been certified by UBC CPD for up to 4.0 Mainpro+® Certified Activity credits.
To request for a simulation, complete this request form.
