COVID-19 AND PHYSICAL THERAPY EDUCATION IN PAKISTAN: TRANSITION FROM TRADITIONAL TO DIGITAL EDUCATION.

Abstract

At the end of the year 2019, a pandemic of COVID 19 unexpectedly emerged in the Wuhan city of China, rapidly spreading across the country and eventually the globe. To mitigate the effect of viral spread resulting in a high transmission rate and increase the load on the healthcare sector governments were forced to impose lockdowns to flatten the curve of COVID 19. In addition, SOPs including mandatory mask, social distancing, thermal check, and frequent sanitizer use was advocated. Similarly following WHO guidance Pakistan also imposed a lockdown resulting in the closure of educational institutes and offices etc. The conventional lecture-based educational system in crowded lecture halls might have facilitated viral transmission so initially the institutes followed the same trend of closure of institutes stopping all educational activities. This created a huge pause in the educational activities in all fields of health sciences including physical therapy education as well1. Due to the uncertain future direction of education activities, the continuous closure of educational institutes caused unrest not only among students but also in faculties of institutes in Pakistan2. To mitigate these educational crises resulting from pandemic and lockdowns, the institutes entailed a change in the educational system from traditional class lecture-based to an online virtual educational system. Considering the complex nature of Physical therapy education including all aspects of teaching such as theoretical, practical, and research work3; shifting to virtual learning and teaching was a big challenge for the students as well as teachers. A low-middle-income country like Pakistan significantly lacked infrastructure and technical support aspects in universities and households to facilitate a virtual education. Few of these included lack of internet access, inadequate bandwidth, limited IT support facilities in universities, the expertise of faculties related to online portals and lack of students’ responsiveness, etc.1. Furthermore, issues of electricity and power failures resulted in additional difficulties. Moreover, because majority of the population of Pakistan lives in peripheral areas of the country, these problems increased manyfold hindering physical therapy education. The missing component of the need for hands-on practice, one on one supervised interaction between student and patient for effective learning in physical therapy education was another missing factor in online education that required consideration.