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MEDICAL SCHOOL
EVALUATION & GRADUATION

Medical Student Education

in the COVID-19 Pandemic:

The Show Must Go On, Safely

By Deborah Conway, MD

A tsunami warning system detects an event
far away and sends alert signals to those who
may be affected so they can respond, prepare
and MOVE! In February and early March of
2020, the medical education world began to
detect tremors of how the seismic event of the
SARS-CoV-2 epidemic would impact our do-
main. The disease was in the news, of course,
having reached U.S. shores. San Antonio re-
ceived quarantined cruise ship passengers. Na-
tional medical education meetings scheduled
for March began to get cancelled preemp-
tively: the first wake-up call to many faculty
that this was a different type of crisis. The
alarm bells were sounding, and we didn’t
know how big the wave was or when it would
hit. How far and how fast did we need to run
to keep our students safe while minimizing in-
terruptions to their tightly scheduled four-year
tious threat, the critical shortage of personal tual Match Day celebration and committed
curriculum? What critical milestones in the
protective equipment (PPE) and the urgent to a virtual graduation event. No one – staff,
life of a developing physician would we have
need to “flatten the curve” became apparent. faculty, leadership, campus and clinical part-
to “leave behind” as we rapidly moved every-
The wave was on the horizon. ners – wavered or flinched during these
one to safety?
In the second and third weeks of March, chaotic days and weeks. Our focus remained
In the early days of March 2020, we con-
the tsunami hit. During the week the stu- on the well-being, safety and ongoing educa-
cluded one first-year medical student course
dents were on Spring Break, we converted tion of our students.
under normal circumstances and sent the stu-
our first-year curriculum, including many By April 2020, conditions had stabilized
dents on their scheduled one-week Spring
team-based, collaborative learning activities, locally to an extent that allowed us to return
Break. Our second-year students were elbow-
entirely online. Third-party testing centers, our clerkship students to their rotations by
deep in United States Medical Licensing Ex-
where USMLE exams are administered, had the end of that month, and our students were
amination (USMLE) Step 1 preparation, with
closed their doors and cancelled test dates. eager to resume their role in patient care and
individual scheduled test dates looming. Our
We pulled clerkship students from clinical clinical development. Established, strong
third-year students were rotating through core
environments based on national organization partnerships between our undergraduate
clerkships with our main hospital partners, as
recommendations as well as health system medical education team, clinical departments
well as community practices. Our fourth-year
partners scrambling to care for patients in and hospital affiliates were key to this rapid
students were eagerly awaiting residency
new ways while protecting their workforce. resumption of clinical activity by our stu-
Match Day and graduation activities. At this
Perhaps most painfully of all, we held a vir- dents. To do this safely required additional
point, however, the full measure of the infec-

12 SAN ANTONIO MEDICINE • June 2021