The coronavirus pandemic has impacted all facets of the education and training of this country’s future hospitalists, including their medical school coursework, elective rotations, clerkships, and residency training – although with variations between settings and localities.
The COVID-19 crisis demanded immediate changes in traditional approaches to medical education. Training programs responded quickly to institute those changes. As hospitals geared up for potential surges in COVID cases starting in mid-March, many onsite training activities for medical students were shut down in order to reserve personal protective equipment for essential personnel and not put learners at risk of catching the virus. A variety of events related to their education were canceled. Didactic presentations and meetings were converted to virtual gatherings on internet platforms such as Zoom. Many of these changes were adopted even in settings with few actual COVID cases.
Medical students on clinical rotations were provided with virtual didactics when in-person clinical experiences were put on hold. In some cases, academic years ended early and fourth-year students graduated early so they might potentially join the hospital work force. Residents’ assignments were also changed, perhaps seeing patients on non–COVID-19 units only or taking different shifts, assignments, or rotations. Public health or research projects replaced elective placements. New electives were created, along with journal clubs, online care conferences, and technology-facilitated, self-directed learning.
But every advancing medical student needs to rotate through an experience of taking care of real patients, said Amy Guiot, MD, MEd, a hospitalist and associate director of medical student education in the division of hospital medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “The Liaison Committee of Medical Education, jointly sponsored by the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association, will not let you graduate a medical student without actual hands-on encounters with patients,” she explained.
For future doctors, especially those pursuing internal medicine – many of whom will practice as hospitalists – their training can’t duplicate “in the hospital” experiences except in the hospital, said Dr. Guiot, who is involved in pediatric training for medical students from the University of Cincinnati and residents.
For third- and fourth-year medical students, getting that personal contact with patients has been the hardest part, she added. But from March to May 2020, that experience was completely shut down at CCHMC, as at many medical schools, because of precautions aimed at preventing exposure to the novel coronavirus for both students and patients. That meant hospitals had to get creative, reshuffling schedules and the order of learning experiences; converting everything possible to virtual encounters on platforms such as Zoom; and reducing the length of rotations, the total number of in-person encounters, and the number of learners participating in an activity.
“We needed to use shift work for medical students, which hadn’t been done before,” Dr. Guiot said. Having students on different shifts, including nights, created more opportunities to fit clinical experiences into the schedule. The use of standardized patients – actors following a script who are examined by a student as part of learning how to do a physical exam – was also put on hold.
“Now we’re starting to get it back, but maybe not as often,” she said. “The actor wears a mask. The student wears a mask and shield. But it’s been harder for us to find actors – who tend to be older adults who may fear coming to the medical center – to perform their role, teaching medical students the art of examining a patient.”
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