The Medical Student Experience in the Era of COVID-19: Reflections on the Transformation of Medical Education

Phenomenon: The American medical student perspective on the coronavirus pandemic, particularly in terms of its effects on medical education and future curricular approach, is valuable. This study seeks to provide future physicians with a voice to share their personal experience with distance learning and suggestions for medical education reform in the era of COVID-19. Approach: A virtual focus group of medical students was conducted on April 30, 2020. Each student was asked to broadly and candidly reflect on their personal experiences relative to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to specifically expound upon how their personal growth and medical education has been impacted. Consent was obtained. Data was coded by key ideas and themes. The content of the discussion was analyzed. Findings: Seven third-year medical students attending a United States traditional school of medicine consented to participate. All participants provided extensive responses to the question. The focus group lasted for 2 hours. The group expounded upon five self-initiated themes: guilt, anxiety, self-awareness, volunteerism, and autonomy. Analysis of these themes from the context of medical student wellness and the future of medical curricula led to the conclusion that three general concepts should be emphasized in reforming medical education. Insights: The coronavirus pandemic has uniquely affected medical students. Their perspectives can inform medical education reform relative to curricular design and student wellness. Key concepts to consider include prioritizing routine virtual delivery of content through innovative technology, encouraging increased student autonomy and self-directed learning through less prescriptive schedules, and emphasizing reflection training and sharing.

Residency Education Reform Program in Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care: An Academic Reform Model

Background: Reform in medical education is a basic process in every academic department, especially in residency programs. Objectives: This study was designed to assess the indices of education and research as part of the Medical Education Reform program (MERP) in the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care (DACC), Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU) for four years. Methods: MERP in DACC, SBMU was designed and implemented as a modern academic reform model; different outcome measures in education and research were assessed to demonstrate the effects of the reform plan in academic improvements. Results: there were significant improvements regarding education indices (i.e., teaching methods, passing comprehensive exams, mentorship, assessment methods, faculty development, professionalism in medical education, integration in education, and crisis management) and research indices (targeted research activities, innovation in research approaches, increasing the impact of research). Conclusions: Based on the experiences of DACC, SBMU regarding clinical anesthesiology residency, reform could be achieved using painstaking plans and continuous efforts with tangible documented outcomes. Often, the management period is not durable, and these reforms require meticulous care to sustain.

Medical education reform in Tajikistan: comparison of the conventional one-year family medicine residency program and the new two-year residency program for postgraduate medical education

Introduction The last two decades have seen a shift in former Soviet countries from highly specialized to more family medicine-focused systems. Medical education has slowly adjusted to these reforms, although the region is still at risk to have a chronic shortage of family doctors. This paper presents the evaluation of a new post-graduate family medicine program in Tajikistan, focused on competency-based training. The findings are relevant for policy makers, international organizations and practitioners participating in similar medical education reform programs. Methods We employed a quasi-experimental control group design and compared intervention residents, control group residents with traditional training, and 1st year residents with no training in two outcomes, clinical knowledge and competencies. We employed two objective measures, a written multiple-choice question test (MCQT) and an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), respectively. We report reliability and validity of the measures along with ANOVA, planned contrasts and effect size estimates to examine differences across groups. Results We found statistically significant differences in both clinical knowledge and competencies between intervention and control groups. We also detected a large intervention effect size. Participants in the intervention outperformed control group participants in the two measures. Our analysis suggests that intervention and control group participants are comparable in terms of initial knowledge and competencies, strengthening the argument that the intervention caused the improvement in the program outcomes. Discussion Receiving tailored training and structured opportunities to practice knowledge and competencies in clinical settings have a positive effect on the education of family medicine doctors in Tajikistan. Our results support curriculum reform and investment in medical education in the form of longer and supervised on-the-job preparation designed to be more in line with international standards. We discuss suggestions for future studies and potential requirements to inform replicability in other countries. Conclusion Family medicine is well recognized as central to health systems throughout the world, but high quality residency training lags behind in some countries. Our study showed that investing in family medicine residency programs and structured training is effective in increasing critical clinical competencies. We encourage promoting comprehensive post graduate family medicine doctor training so that the goals of a family medicine centered health system are attainable.

Innovations in medical education in Vietnam

Medical education reforms are a crucial component to ensuring healthcare systems can meet current and future population needs. In 2010, a Lancet commission called for ‘a new century of transformative health professional education’, with a particular focus on the needs of low-income and-middle-income countries (LMICs), such as Vietnam. This requires policymakers and educational leaders to find and apply novel and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of medical education. This review describes the current state of physician training in Vietnam and how innovations in medical education curriculum, pedagogy and technology are helping to transform medical education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It also examines enabling factors, including novel partnerships and new education policies which catalysed and sustained these innovations. Our review focused on the experience of five public universities of medicine and pharmacy currently undergoing medical education reform, along with a newly established private university. Research in the area of medical education innovation is needed. Future work should look at the outcomes of these innovations on medical education and the quality of medical graduates. Nonetheless, this review aims to inspire future innovations in medical education in Vietnam and in other LMICs.

Medical Education Research Trends, 1989–2018: A Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis

Background We are now in the third generation of medical education reform. To fully grasp this transformation, we need to identify the field’s knowledge structure. This study conducted a bibliometric analysis to discover the general publication statue during the last three decades (1989–2018) with an eye for identifying prolific institutions, core journals, international collaboration, and the evolution of key themes.Methods We retrieved 15,329 papers from the Web of Science Core Collection database that were published between 1989 and 2018 , and we analysed them to determine prolific institutions, core journals, institutional collaboration statue, and hot spots of research. R studio, SciMAT, and VOSviewer were jointly applied. For a better understanding of thematic evolution in the field, we split the study period into three sub-periods with equal time spans.Results We discovered that, worldwide, scholars are increasingly attracted to research on medical education. Medical Education is the most prolific journal in the field. While the US publishes an overwhelming proportion of the most relevant papers, articles published by the UK are, on average, most frequently cited. We identify five key research centres based on the most prolific academic institutions, and our analysis of relevant collaborations reveals that international collaboration is common. The hottest themes during each sub-period are revealed and how they evolve across different time spans are also detected.Conclusions This bibliometric study identifies the scientific structure of medical education research over the past three decades. Ultimately, it may help scholars identify new topics and future research challenges in this field and, moreover, highlight meaningful evidence for policymakers in the field of medical teaching innovation.

Participation of M. I. Pirogov in the work of the Medical Council of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the medical commission at the Ministry of Public Education

Annotation. This article is about M. I. Pyrohov’s participation in the activity of Medical Board of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Medical Interim Committee at the Ministry of Health, about graduate medical education reform in the Russian Empire, the establishment of the Medical Department in St. Volodymyr Kyiv University.

Reflections on the Reform of Medical Education in Contemporary Colleges and Universities

The advancement of science and technology and the advent of a new era have made my country's medical education field show more vigorous vitality in the continuous development of the times. Therefore, how to improve the medical education reform in colleges and universities under the current social background has become a problem that needs to be solved by people. From different angles, the author looks for specific ways to promote reforms in an orderly manner, hoping to provide references for other medical educators.

PECULIARITIES OF TEACHING THE CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGY SUBJECT TO STUDENTS OF THE DENTAL FACULTY IN MODERN CONDITIONS REFORM OF MEDICAL EDUCATION

Summary. The aim of the work is to study the effectiveness of using interactive teaching methods and practical skills in the educational process, which will help improve the quality of training for students of the dental faculty at the Department of Internal Medicine of the Dentistry Faculty named after Professor M.N. Berezhnitsky. Based on the study of the effectiveness of using interactive teaching methods and the development of practical skills in clinical pharmacology in the educational process in the fourth year of study on the Dentistry Faculty under the medical education reform demonstrate, that only a comprehensive approach to the study of clinical pharmacology with the assimilation of modern theoretical material, the development of practical skills at the patient’s bedside, and by solving situational problems, self-awareness of classroom and extracurricular work allows students to explore clinical pharmacology in accordance with the modern requirements of medical reform. The knowledge acquired at the department about pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, interaction and side effects of drugs, effectiveness, safety of prescribed drugs and acquired practical skills contribute to the development of professionalism of a future specialist.

Discussion on the Influence and Enlightenment of Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) on Medical Students in China (Preprint)

UNSTRUCTURED COVID-19 spread in Wuhan in January 2020 and the whole country worked together to fight the epidemic. Up to now, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed, and more than 40,000 medical staffs have assisted first-line rescue in Wuhan. As a reserve force for clinical medicine, medical students bear the heavy responsibility of future medical development. The author, as a medical student, has considered carefully about facing the present and looking forward to the future after this epidemic. The author mainly discusses about the influence of COVID-19 on medical students and its enlightenment on medical students and medical education reform in this paper, and hopes to resonate with medical students and provide some new ideas for future medical education reform.