Medical education focus in published articles related to COVID-19

G. Aggarwal, S. Aggarwal, J. Robles, J.R. Depasquale, A. Auseon

Department of Medicine, Jersey City Medical Center, Jersey City, NJ, USA. drsaurabhaggarwal@gmail.com

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• Infectious Diseases

OBJECTIVE: The ongoing pandemic of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has affected >2 million patients with approximately 900,000 cases in the United States alone. Medical education has possibly suffered during this time, due to disease mitigation strategies and stress on both students and teachers. We aimed to quantify the publications describing the impact of COVID-19 on medical education in the early stage of the pandemic.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Abstract and titles related to COVID-19 listed in PubMed were reviewed for an educational focus. Articles with an educational focus were further evaluated for characteristics of content.

RESULTS: Out of a total of 3641 articles related to COVID-19, only 26 (0.7%) articles had an educational theme. Thirteen articles were pertaining to residency and fellowship education and twelve articles were focused on medical student education. Only one article referred to nursing education.

CONCLUSIONS: Publications pertaining to medical education during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic are few. There is an urgent need for scholarship to understand the best processes and develop innovative methods that can help improve the educational experience of students and trainees during this extraordinary time.

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