Interaction Between Professors, Medical Students and Patients in the COVID-19 Era: An Educational Experience Report

Abstract

In March 2020, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was declared a pandemic with high rates of transmission and mortality (World Health Organization, 2020). Since then, presential educational activities were suspended in Brazil and shifted to an online format. Medical education was a particularly challenging area for this adaptation due to its practical training characteristics, which traditionally takes place at the patient ́s bedside. We believe that direct contact with patients brings an emotional involvement that enhances students’ willingness to learn. Translating this learning process to exclusively theoretical online lectures did not seem to be an adequate alternative (Althwanay, 2020). Training students for remote contact with patients could be an alternative to maintain practical activities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic (Ianco, 2020). This has already been incorporated in some medical schools in the last decades with the advance of telemedicine (Waseh, 2019) and gained special importance in the current scenario. Here, we describe an educational experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our objective is to provide a narrative description of the adaptations made for online learning and describe students’ perceptions about it. MATERIALS AND METHODS