Medical education in the midst of pandemic and beyond

• Published in: FASEB BioAdvances Vol. 3; no. 5; pp. 374 - 376
• Main Authors: Mejicano, George, Ito, Tomo
• Format: Journal Article Web Resource
• Language: English
• Published: United States John Wiley & Sons, Inc 01.05.2021; John Wiley and Sons Inc; Wiley
• Subjects: Community; Core curriculum; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Decision making; Disease transmission; Epidemiology; Governors; Health care; Informatics; Learning; Medical education; Medical personnel; Medicine; Pandemics; Pediatrics; Public health; Student participation; Telemedicine; Ultrasound; Oregon; United States > US
• ISSN: 2573-9832; 2573-9832
• DOI: 10.1096/fba.2020-00087

Between spring and early summer, more than 30 new virtual elective courses were created for clinical curriculum phase students and spanned a wide variety of topics: COVID‐19‐related electives, virtual radiation oncology, ultrasound, dermatology, medical informatics, introduction to American Indian/Alaskan Native Health, family medicine, medical decision‐making, narrative medicine, and various subspecialties in pediatrics. Medical students appreciated the elective because of its timeliness, pertinence, utility, and the wide range of topics that were included such as epidemiology, virology, vaccinology, narrative medicine, mental health impact of isolation, and use of social media to spread both false and accurate information. TELEHEALTH Even before the pandemic, telehealth and related digital health strategies were predicted to play a key role in meeting the nation's health professional shortage. 1‐3 As such, telemedicine was already the focus one of our program objectives that students had to learn before earning their medical degree.