Teaching alcohol and smoking counselling in times of COVID-19 to 6(th)-semester medical students: experiences with a digital-only and a blended learning teaching approach using role-play and feedback

Objectives: Digital teaching formats have seen increased use, and not just since the beginning of the pandemic. They can also be used to teach cognitive, practical and communicative learning objectives effectively. We describe the implementation of an online-only course on alcohol/smoking counselling in the COVID-19 summer semester (SS) 2020 and an inverted classroom (IC) concept in the winter semester (WS) 2020/21 at the University Hospital of Würzburg. Methodology: The interdisciplinary subject of “prevention” teaches students about high-risk alcohol consumption/smoking and how to conduct a brief verbal intervention. All 143 (SS) and 131 (WS) 6(th)-semester medical students completed a 90-minute course: module 1 included a Prezi(®) presentation on alcohol/smoking basics. Module 2 introduced a counselling concept (alcohol or smoking) online or classroom-based (WS only), depending on the participants’ choice. In the online practical component, each student created a counselling video and reflections at home, and later received written feedback from lecturers/tutors. Supervised role-playing was used in the classroom-based format in the WS. There were 2 exam questions on module 1 at the end of each semester. Results: The students surveyed (11%) were satisfied with module 1. Practical exercises and feedback received praise in the evaluation of the classroom-based format (response: 97%). It was not possible for all students to perform counselling due to time constraints. A majority of participants filmed live role-playing in the online practical component. The exam questions were answered correctly by 31% (SS) and 36% (WS) respectively. Conclusions: Counselling can also be taught digitally: creating one’s own videos with delayed written feedback is an innovative form of teaching. We are now aiming for a mix of both aspects as an IC with 90 minutes of classroom-based practical exercises.