Usefulness of online classes in undergraduate medicine; students’ perception

Abstract

Introduction: The repercussions of the COVID 19 pandemic have impacted society in general and medical education in particular, so medical schools have put into practice the creativity of both managers and teachers to deal with this situation with the best strategies that
positively affect the training of future doctors. 
Objective: To compare the perception that students have, according to semester, about the usefulness of online classes in undergraduate medicine at a private school in the south of the State of Tamaulipas in Mexico. 
Method: Online survey through Google Forms to 261 students from semesters 1 to 8, from a private medical school in southern Tamaulipas, selected through a stratified sampling. As the main variable of the study, the perception of the usefulness of online classes was considered.
Results: 53% of the students do not agree that the online modality is useful for the development of procedural knowledge and 80% consider that face-to-face classes are better than online classes.
Conclusions: The online modality is not useful for the development of the procedural component of clinical competence, and it is useful only in some subjects of the medical career. Face-to-face education is better than the online modality for learning medicine.