* By Marcelo Lancerotti
It is true that the emergence of the pandemic directly affected the entire health sector. Hospitals and institutions in the area had their routines transformed in a matter of days, in a context of uncertainty even for the most experienced professionals. Not far from this, the education segment also suffered from changes in habits, suspension of activities, new formats and the need to include new technologies to enable the quality of education.
Faced with this scenario, medical universities found themselves surrounded by new challenges. How to deal with a global health emergency, with adaptations to new teaching methodologies, with a shortage of professionals - who have migrated from the classroom to the front line in the fight against COVID -, while they need to guarantee the training of professionals trained? All of this has led to a real revolution in medical education, which needed an abrupt transformation to be able to fulfill this role.
The main challenges of medical education
With the social isolation imposed by the pandemic, universities, regardless of their fluency in IT, had to adapt – like the entire market – and adopt a new teaching model: distance learning. But how to maintain the engagement of students in this new learning process and provide for the retention of knowledge itself? In particular, taking into account the difference in student profiles, social classes, levels of familiarity with technology and the degree of maturity of universities regarding the use of these tools.
It is a fact that, even before the pandemic, many medical universities had been betting on active teaching methodologies to ensure the formation of qualified and more independent professionals. In a way, these methods make it possible, for example, to set up study groups and inverted classrooms, whose role is to encourage students to spontaneously seek knowledge and not just wait for information brought by teachers during class time.
Even with this update by the institutions, nothing compares to the transformation generated by this new scenario. The cultural and spatial change, as well as the inclusion of a digital 100% environment, triggered uncertainties about the academic future for most students, aggravated by the temporary and emergency cancellation of practical activities of those attending the first undergraduate cycles.
Of course, the abrupt scenario opened the eyes of the entire academic community to the need for investments in technology. Initially, the idea was to continue the process of training students at different stages of the course, not only to not delay their studies, but also to prepare them for immediate action.
The role of technology in medical education
However, what has been done is a big step towards new possibilities and for the evolution of medical education when the scenario is closer to normality. In some institutions, online classes, in addition to being more interactive, have been reinforced by more up-to-date platforms that are consistent with the reality of students and the needs of each university, which can be used to improve infrastructure and expand the forms of teaching, even in a post-pandemic setting.
For students in more advanced cycles, where care in hospitals and health centers is part of reality and daily life, the challenge was different: How to have access to reliable and quality medical content, now facing the lack of guidance and, in a second moment, an overwhelming volume of information – many of them without scientific basis – that emerged and changed all the time?
This new context required a strong scrutiny of the most up-to-date guidelines to be followed. First, to prepare the faculty so that they could transfer this knowledge to students. Second, to support these students in making important decisions.
The evidence-based medicine paradigm is well recognized by the medical profession, but it is relatively recent and is still evolving. However, there is already an interesting shift towards using technologies as scientific validation.
At this time, the resources of clinical decision support they have become one of the pillars to assist the work developed by the medical area and ensure clinical effectiveness. Evidence played a key role at a delicate moment.
Over time, the pandemic scenario tends to come to an end in many parts of the world. However, the consequences and the technological impact generated at this time must remain a strong ally for the future evolution of medical education in universities.
*Marcelo Lancerotti is Country Manager of the Clinical Effectiveness unit at Wolters Kluwer, Health in Brazil.
Notice: The opinion presented in this article is the responsibility of its author and not of ABES - Brazilian Association of Software Companies
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