Incorporating a New Technology While Doing No Harm, Virtually

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A core challenge of medical education is preparing physicians for future learning. While this traditionally has meant confronting scientific advances, trainees also must be prepared to engage with new health care delivery models and technologies. An example is telemedicine, defined as the use of electronic communication by clinicians and patients to exchange health information.

Practicing telemedicine is fundamentally different from conducting a face-to-face encounter. In addition to physical separation and its implications for examination, telemedicine automatically brings into the relationship a third partner—the organization providing the technology and setting the parameters of the e-visit. In this Viewpoint, the researchers discuss some of the promises of and pitfalls presented by telemedicine and their implications for medical education. They propose strategies for incorporating telemedicine into existing Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) competencies for medical education.

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