The traditional structure of medical education is well-established with rules and procedures designed to produce medical stuff that follows high standards.
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COVID-19 pandemic disrupted everything we were used to and prevented some forms of medical education that are crucial in producing well-trained doctors.
Τhe physical presence is the basic tool in medical education: being present in the university and working with patients is something that forms the very essence of the education for an expert who will work with people. That presence was interrupted and education was forced to go online and, of course, novel ways of student assessment were necessary.
COVID has some direct negative consequences on medical education, but surprisingly there are some positive sides to it too.
First, nothing can replace a direct mentor-student relationship, not even very modem distant learning technologies. Well, that's not exactly completely true. Students joined distance learning with enthusiasm, most probably because they are used to modern technologies.
Online learning provides great flexibility and the result is even higher attendance of courses, and students are motivated to use a new way of learning. Indeed, students think that medical education could use technology way much that it does now.
On the other hand, students have a problem with motivation, can't interact with other students so easily and fast, and there is a problem of social isolation.
That social isolation is a major problem because many students have their role models who became unavailable in person. Then, that negatively influences career decisions because an online session with the mentor is not the same as the day-to-day contact and exchange of information. That has an impact on further career decisions which is an important factor in young doctors.
Then there was a problem with rotations. Students weren't able to gain experience in a different hospital, faculty, and patients, which means less experience. That also means they didn't have that experience in their letters of recommendation which may be a problem in the future.
On the other hand, in many countries students jumped in to help frontline health workers, and the experience they gained that way is immense. The ability to learn in real life and difficult conditions
was welcomed by students and they were forced to learn a lot in a relatively short amount of time.
But that has mixed consequences. Some experienced doctors think that their future colleagues will be among the best intensive care unit specialists because of all experiences they collected during work with COVID patients. But they lack experience in other fields, for example, deeper knowledge about other lung conditions, and medical schools had to introduce other courses to make sure their young colleagues become competent doctors with all knowledge the graduation requires.
Another problem was the disruption of clinical and written examinations. Many of them were postponed or canceled, which, of course, no student likes.
It turned out that open book examinations, where students can be whenever they want, usually in their own homes, lead to good results. The use of open book examinations forces students to use critical thinking, eliminating "learn and repeat" examinations and that's certainly good for future doctors.
Pandemic or not, standards have to be maintained, and there is no way they would be lowered just because students have a hard time. For example, while in some courses you have to have 40% of correct answers to pass, in anatomy you must have 70% to pass. This is understandable because anatomy is the foundation of medicine. That way we assure that future doctors are not lagging behind their older colleagues.
It's yet to be seen how those new ways of learning will affect young doctors in the future. They had a difficult time, but young people adapt quickly and that's their advantage. A loss of some direct contact was there, of course, but the opportunity to take part in real work is something other generations didn't have or rarely had.
Taken all into account, it seems that difficulties didn't discourage future doctors and that the future is bright for them. ■