Digital Teaching in Medical Education: Scientific Literature Landscape Review

BACKGROUND: Digital teaching in medical education has grown in popularity in the recent years. However, to the best of our knowledge, no bibliometric report to date has been published that analyzes this important literature set to reveal prevailing topics and trends and their impacts reflected in citation counts. OBJECTIVE: We used a bibliometric approach to unveil and evaluate the scientific literature on digital teaching research in medical education, demonstrating recurring research topics, productive authors, research organizations, countries, and journals. We further aimed to discuss some of the topics and findings reported by specific highly cited works. METHODS: The Web of Science electronic database was searched to identify relevant papers on digital teaching research in medical education. Basic bibliographic data were obtained by the “Analyze” and “Create Citation Report” functions of the database. Complete bibliographic data were exported to VOSviewer for further analyses. Visualization maps were generated to display the recurring author keywords and terms mentioned in the titles and abstracts of the publications. RESULTS: The analysis was based on data from 3978 papers that were identified. The literature received worldwide contributions with the most productive countries being the United States and United Kingdom. Reviews were significantly more cited, but the citations between open access vs non–open access papers did not significantly differ. Some themes were cited more often, reflected by terms such as virtual reality, innovation, trial, effectiveness, and anatomy. Different aspects in medical education were experimented for digital teaching, such as gross anatomy education, histology, complementary medicine, medicinal chemistry, and basic life support. Some studies have shown that digital teaching could increase learning satisfaction, knowledge gain, and even cost-effectiveness. More studies were conducted on trainees than on undergraduate students. CONCLUSIONS: Digital teaching in medical education is expected to flourish in the future, especially during this era of COVID-19 pandemic.