Continuing Undergraduate Pathology Medical Education in the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Global Pandemic: The Johns Hopkins Virtual Surgical Pathology Clinical Elective.

CONTEXT: In the early months of the response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) (Baltimore, Maryland) leadership reached out to faculty to develop and implement virtual clinical clerkships after all in-person medical student clinical experiences were suspended. OBJECTIVE: To develop and implement a digital slide-based virtual surgical pathology clinical elective to meet the demand for meaningful and robust virtual clinical electives in response to the temporary suspension of in-person clinical rotations at JHUSOM. DESIGN: The Virtual Surgical Pathology (VSP) elective was modeled after the in-person surgical pathology elective, to include virtual previewing and sign-out with standardized cases supplemented by synchronous and asynchronous pathology educational content. RESULTS: Validation of existing web communications technology and slide scanning systems was performed by feasibility testing. Curriculum development included drafting of course objectives and syllabus, Blackboard course site design, electronic-lecture creation, communications with JHUSOM leadership, scheduling, and slide curation. Subjectively, the weekly schedule averaged 35-40 hours to asynchronous, synchronous, and independent content, approximately 10-11 hours of which were synchronous. As of February 2021, VSP has hosted 35 JHUSOM and eight non-JHUSOM students, who have provided positive subjective and objective course feedback. CONCLUSIONS: The Johns Hopkins VSP elective provided meaningful clinical experience to 43 students in a time of immense online education need. Added benefits of implementing VSP included increased medical student exposure to pathology as a medical specialty and demonstration of how digital slides have the potential to improve standardization of the pathology clerkship curriculum.