Countries around the world are experiencing widespread challenges in health workforce expansion to manage the health implications of dramatic changes in demographic, socio-economic, epidemiological, climatic, and technological factors. These changes require health providers to demonstrate increasing flexibility and creativity, along with a more proactive approach in terms of addressing the interactions among diverse factors associated with health and healthcare in an ever-changing environment.1 However, traditional didactic methodologies have been widely utilised to emphasise the central role of the teacher in knowledge transfer and learning practices mainly via planned lectures with large amounts of theoretical content in a fixed environment. This approach offers limited opportunities for students to practise and share their knowledge, hindering the development of adaptability to meet the growing demand for lifelong learning. In this issue of the Hong Kong Medical Journal, Ng et al2 evaluated the effectiveness of online micromodule teaching in knowledge transfer within the urology subspecialty among medical students without prior exposure to urology practice. The ‘flipped classroom’ demonstrated similar efficacy in knowledge transfer, as measured by pre-intervention and post-intervention multiple-choice questions and objective structured clinical examinations, compared with the traditional didactic lecture model.2 The findings suggest that the adoption of micromodules as a ‘flipped classroom’ component can maximise time for practical training and experience sharing between clinicians and medical students. This approach incorporating the use of digital media echoes previous research which highlighted the need for urology training innovation because of the impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic.
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