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COVID-19
PANDEMIC

Why Medical Students (and everyone else)

Should Learn Everything They Can About

COVID-19 By Michael E. Walston, MBS

Respectfully acknowledging and setting aside for a moment the ucational opportunity. Following the therapies deployed against
enormous human toll of the disease, for medical students the COVID-19 continues to be instructive and should be of benefit to
COVID-19 pandemic represents a singular educational opportunity. learners at any stage of their career.
Truly, regardless of where you are in your medical education, those It goes without saying that the COVID-19 pandemic has stressed
interested should dive into the research to learn all they can about our healthcare system in ways not seen before and has spurred in-
this disease, its treatment, and the relevant healthcare policy and novation that will continue to change the landscape of healthcare.
systems. This is a rare moment when it is possible for an Whether it was the cancellation of nonessential or elective
individual to learn everything currently known surgeries, changes to reimbursement or the logis-
about a single disease entity, its treatment, and tics of resources, this is the bureaucracy of
critically evaluate new evidence and studies. medicine. Studying the convoluted forest
As scientific information about this of acronyms that comprise these sys-
novel coronavirus emerged, this was tems is not appealing to most medical
of course the first area to focus as a students, let alone practicing physi-
learner. What we initially under- cians, and often only garners a
stood to be a relatively straightfor- passing survey in medical school.
ward respiratory virus has, COVID-19 offers an impetus as
however, developed quite a few well as a framework to begin to
more interesting wrinkles, (coag- learn more about these issues
ulopathy, stroke, dermatologic) and perhaps work to improve
which the medical and scientific them or at least navigate them
communities are still working to more effectively.
fully comprehend. That is one rea- Lastly, the pandemic reinforces
son this pandemic is an excellent ed- and makes real and urgent the im-
ucational opportunity: if one is portance of the social determinants of
sidelined and cannot participate, there is health, such as employment and eco-
the chance to witness the development of nomic stability, education, food security,
scientific understanding. healthcare access and social resources. It has
The evidence-based medicine pyramid, outcome been established that chronic diseases are risk factors
measures, statistical power, p values and so forth are often for worse outcomes with COVID-19 as well as the develop-
studied in abstraction or historically as evidence for current treat- ment and severity of many chronic diseases are linked to social de-
ment guidelines, for example. In this setting, the subject might seem terminants of health. For the interested learner, this can be a
to have less real-world importance to learners than established bi- valuable reminder of what has been established: the strong associ-
ology and pathophysiology, proven treatments and gold-standard ation between the social determinants of health, disease, and health
tests. But when none of that is available, what are we to rely upon? outcomes.
For those early in their medical careers, we are provided in the cur- To conclude, this is certainly a unique moment to be in medicine.
rent crisis an opportunity to critically appraise publications, study For learners, we can make the most of the tragedy of a global pan-
new therapies, follow epidemiological data and make our own de- demic by learning all that we can about this emerging disease and
cisions in real time. then use this educational experience to refine and improve our own
Tracking the therapies which have been used in the treatment of skill set for understanding a disease process, to evaluate data and to
COVID-19 would obviously be a valuable real-time object lesson: better know the larger healthcare system.
hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, patient proning, ventilation strate-
gies and so forth. While the purpose of this article is not to explore Michael E. Walston, MBS, is a DO candidate, Class of 2021, at the Uni-
these therapies, using the experience of reading and critically eval- versity of the Incarnate Word School of Osteopathic Medicine and is a member
uating the studies as well as digging into the data is an excellent ed- of the Bexar County Medical Society.

32 San Antonio Medicine • June 2020