Lessons learned from a pandemic: implications for a combined exercise and educational programme for medical students

BACKGROUND: The ‘MED-WELL’ programme is a combined exercise and educational intervention designed to promote well-being among medical students and educate students about prescribing exercise as medicine in clinical practice. Due to COVID-19 public health restrictions of social distancing the ‘MED-WELL’ programme was offered online instead of in-person in 2021. The aim of this study is to compare the experiences of participants in the ‘MED-WELL’ programme online to those that previously participated in the same programme in-person to understand the student experience and optimize programme delivery. METHODS: Purposive sampling was used to recruit 20 participants to a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews. Ten study participants took part in the ‘MED-WELL’ programme when it was offered in-person, and the other ten study participants took part in the programme when it was offered online. All interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed using Microsoft Teams. A combined inductive and deductive approach was used for analysis. An inductive thematic analysis was utilized to categorize data into higher order codes, themes, and overarching themes. The theory of online learning provided the theoretical framework for a deductive approach. RESULTS: Analysis of the data produced five overarching themes: ‘student-student’, ‘student-teacher’, ‘student-content’, ‘student-environment’, and ‘effects of a pandemic’. The first four themes detail distinct types of interaction that participants had with various entities of the ‘MED-WELL’ programme and the effects that these interactions had on participant experiences. ‘Effects of a pandemic’ refers to the context of delivering the ‘MED-WELL’ programme online during a pandemic and how this mode of delivery influenced participants and the programme. CONCLUSIONS: Optimizing the ‘MED-WELL’ programme relies on an understanding of how participants interact with different entities of the programme and are motivated to attend and engage. Participants tended to favour an in-person mode of delivery, however certain advantages of delivering the programme online were also identified. The findings from this study can be used to inform similar experiential and educational exercise interventions, and may help plan for potential future restrictions on in-person educational and exercise-based programmes. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-022-03290-1.