Permanent Education for Health Professionals during COVID-19: Scoping Review

Abstract

Background: The pandemic of COVID-19 was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020. With this, the world had to adapt to a new way of carrying out permanent health education. The objective was to map what the national and international literature currently has to say about how continuing education is being provided to health professionals in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methodology: This is a scoping review, thus, the PRISMA-ScR guidelines were used for its elaboration. The search was performed in several stages, by four independent reviewers, following the criteria of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), in the following databases: PubMed, Science Direct, LILACS and MEDLINE (via BVS). The descriptors used were "Continuing Education", "health" and "COVID-19". Results: Ten articles dealing with the proposed theme were included and analyzed in this review. The year of publication ranged from 2020 to 2021. Six articles were conducted in Brazil, one in Poland, one in China and one in Canada. Five of them were in Portuguese and five in English. Nine studies are descriptive experience reports and one theoretical-descriptive study of actions performed to promote HPS. The most prevalent research site was the Brazilian Basic Health Units (BHU), but it also occurred in tertiary hospitals. It was possible to identify several measures for continuing education in Brazil and worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. Conclusion: The strategies employed were effective and produced a positive impact on the communities employed. We encourage actions like those presented to be carried out within health services, within the reality and singularity of each place, in order to provide updates and continuity of education in health.