The importance of having faculty readiness and technology to transition to a hybrid or a fully online anatomical education in Medical Schools during Covid‐19 Pandemic

Abstract

In the middle of March last year, many faculties of Medicine around the world faced the difficult and unprecedented decision to either stop completely face to face education or reduce it to the minimum possible. Faculty and students encountered many challenges to ensure the integrity and continuity of the medical education process. Going completely online seemed unachievable.There are still many Schools of Medicine worldwide with the traditional curriculum where live lectures are the center of the instruction. In the USA most of the schools of medicine have moved to a more integrated curriculum, some of them have stopped given lectures and others moved to video‐casted lectures.Many courses in the preclinical medical curriculum were easier to transition to Virtual learning in the majority of the universities. Good examples are physiology, histology and pathology.Unfortunately, in the other hand Anatomy presented more difficulties everywhere. Outside the USA most Universities had to stop dissections and prosections. Instructors had to rapidly adapt to the changes. This crisis has highlighted the necessity to have the medical educators trained to use the technology available and the creation of their own multimedia teaching materials. The schools which were already using more technology and having access to a reliable internet connection were much prepared to succeed. Remarkably few universities were able to use prosections and allowed the students to review them taking all the necessary precautions. Nevertheless to achieve this the instructors have to prepare 3 or more times the prosections needed in a normal year.Unfortunately, only during the clerkships especially in the course of surgical rotations we will know the consequences of missing the opportunity to have dissected a body. However there is always time for improvement and also time to prepare for a post pandemic curriculum adjustments.The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private ones of the author/speaker and are not to be construed as official or reflecting the views of the Department of Defense, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences or any other agency of the U.S. Government.