The Unprecedented times of Covid-19 Pandemic and the Online Medical Education: -a Survey Report

Abstract

Background: In the year 2019 the National medical commission was ready to roll open its newly framed competency-based curriculum (CBME) and the colleges and medical universities were all geared up and trained to do the same. The tale began at a new pace with the academic session 2020 but was jolted soon by the spreading tentacles of COVID-19 pandemic. This disease made a drastic impact on education delivery system and the medical graduates were soon facing the challenge of not only revised curriculum but also the revised methodology of teaching. The present study compares the outcome of online education for students with CBME and with traditional variant of medical education. Material & Methods: A retrospective survey analysis questionnaire was created on google forms, on the basis of DREEM questionnaire [appendix 1]. The student's perspective was scored on Likert scale. The students were divided into study groups following traditional and CBME curriculum. The SPSS system was utilized to find the mean score of responses and student t-test and chi square tests were used. Results: The comparison of results for student's perception towards online education suggested statistically non-significant outputs between the genders but significant difference for study groups i.e. traditional vs. CBME curriculum. Conclusion: This survey highlighted that curating the new format of curriculum for delivery in an online format would produce better outputs and making availability of resources for use during online classes can increase the performance of students to be better aligned with graduate medical regulations.