Medical Education during COVID-19: Response at one medical school

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant toll on healthcare across the globe. The pandemic caused many other consequences, including economic implications and teaching consequences, notably in higher education throughout the world. COVID-19 and the resulting closure of university campuses have had many impacts on Health Professions Education (HPEd), affecting all aspects, including teaching methods, assessment methods, curricula, student-teacher relationships, student selection processes, and student well-being. It has had significant effects on the setting in which students are required to learn more skills such as psychomotor skills. This manuscript aims to investigate the changes implemented in medical education during the pandemic and describe one medical school’s response to medical education changes during the pandemic. Methods: This study was a combination of a case study done by in-depth investigation of the current context at one medical school during the pandemic and action research done by gathering information to change a condition in a particular place. Results: Many changes were implemented in medical education, including online teaching for basic science courses (first two years of the program) and online assessments (video-based remote proctoring) in the program’s first two years. Such courses as Clinical Skills are using telemedicine/telehealth concepts in training. There were changes such as video-based remote proctoring of NBME shelf-examinations even in the assessments of clerkships/clinical rotations. Conclusions: Adaptations of medical education during this pandemic is highly dependent on technology. Most of the changes will be practiced until the campuses are open. We need to understand that these changes were made over this unprecedented period, i.e. the pandemic as an emergency rather than as a normal change process.