Improving the clinical teaching and training for health college students during COVID-19

Abstract

The adverse effects of COVID-19 have affected the teaching and learning opportunities across many disciplines including medicine. Although, control measures due to COVID-19 might be beneficial for medical students or health college students in the short run they might prove harmful in the long run. This opinion article aims to provide an overview of how COVID-19 has affected medical education and how to improve clinical teaching and learning environment to keep educating physicians of the future. Different articles were searched from Google Scholar and PubMed. We undertook a review of full-text research articles that were published in the English language both in developed and developing countries with a specific focus on teaching and learning in medical or health colleges during the COVID-19 outbreak. We evaluated research articles and reviewed their references to avoid missing any article relevant to the topic of interest. Social distancing due to COVID-19 has prevented medical and health college students from gathering in large classrooms, auditoriums, and even in clinical settings such as wards. Moreover, most of the countries in the developing world shut down colleges and universities, which resulted in a gap in learning and education. Therefore, innovative and smart approaches and strategies need to be adapted in the field of medicine to overcome the challenges of gaps in learning and teaching. Online approaches such as zoom and skype could be adapted by the colleges with breakout sessions and simulation exercises to maintain the optimum learning and teaching environment in the health colleges and education with maximum support from the IT department. During the COVID-19 crisis, it is essential that the medical or health colleges and universities to devise and revise the old pedagogies and approaches of learning and teaching. In addition, the lecturers and professors in these universities need to prioritize scholarly and innovative approaches to implement more practical and sustainable solutions. This is the time to get the maximum benefit out of technology to develop and implement novice online ways of teaching and learning.