Arriving on the US west coast in January of 2020, the SARS-CoV2 pandemic impacted all aspects of life, including medical practice and education. Medical trainees were among the first to assume roles of direct and consultative care providers for patients suffering from SARS-CoV2. At the same time, structured in-person didactics - a cornerstone of medical education and trainee development - were placed on hold. Standard educational models struggled to overcome the challenges imposed by Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations on social distancing. This was compounded by frequently changing provider schedules due to continually evolving patient, hospital, and community needs. This new environment fostered feelings of isolation and fear of the unknown among trainees who were on the frontlines of the battle against COVID-19. In this setting, a clear need arose for a novel shared medical education platform capable of rapidly disseminating SARS-CoV2 content rooted in cross-disciplinary medical expertise.

The start of the academic year is the perfect time to re-evaluate and re-scope our career goals. Work on one of the following tasks every month throughout the school year, or use them as a guide to engage with a peer mentoring group to push everyone further, faster.

When the COVID-19 pandemic began, fourth year medical students were in the process of preparing for their USMLE step 2CK exam. At this stage, usually they would also be in a clinical rotation with required patient experiences, and beginning applications for their residencies. Instead, they were all at home self-isolating while studying and dealing with much uncertainty.

At the University of Central Florida, College of Medicine (UCF COM), we offered an elective for three blocks over the Summer to assist them in prepping them for their exam. This served as an opportunity to encourage self-regulated learning and foster an online environment which nurtures dual communication, support, and encouragement. Below are some techniques which we found to be successful in navigating an online learning environment.

Over the past several months, we have seen how innovation in health science education (HSE) plays a critical role in health and science discovery as our community continues to address challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time, many of our colleagues have demonstrated the courage to take risks, experiment, fail, and try again—often resulting in an improvement on their original ideas. HSE innovation moves us beyond the common, incremental changes and quality improvement initiatives commonly seen within our organizations. To continue advancing health and science through education innovation, it is important to define a framework that helps us better understand what HSE innovation means. 

In this episode Victoria Brazil speaks with Louise Allen about her recent Medical Teacher publication on Applying Social Learning Theory to explain the impacts of Continuing Professional Development. Her paper, with co-authors Marg Hay, Elizabeth Armstrong and Claire Palermo is an exemplar of qualitative research, and involved semi-structured interviews with previous Harvard Macy and Monash Institute for Health and Clinical Education program participants. The team found that scholars broadened their networks, affirmed themselves, applied learning in practice and enjoyed career progression. The impacts of these courses reached beyond themselves to both the people and organizations with which  they are involved.