Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Medical Education

Background: Pandemic of COVID-19 has affected almost every aspect of human life. Medical Education is
profoundly affected globally because of social distancing which has prohibited teacher-medical student and
medical student-patient’s interaction. During this paradigm shift, students both have faced different challenges.
College of Medicine, University of Ha’il is not an exception.
Aim: The aim of present study was to assess students’ perspective to list supportive and inhibitory factors that
has affected implementation of Medical Education during COVID-19 Pandemic. Study results would be helpful to
design a feasible cost effective strategy to minimize the effect of those inhibitory factors so our medical
undergraduates of coming academic year attains maximum competencies during this period of pandemic.
Methodology: It was a cross sectional study conducted in College of Medicine, University of Ha’il from November
2020 till February 2021. Our study respondents were undergraduate MBBS male and female students who were
attending online sessions since March 2020.
Results: Eighty-two percentage of students learned digital technology, gained confidence and self-efficacy (61%)
hence their metacognitive learning ability has increased (71%). As the lectures are being recorded, students
found online lecturing more useful (88%) as compared to classroom. Flipped Learning was liked by 70%. Online
teaching saves time (89%) its low cost (89%) and there is there is flexibility of location (90%). Main barrier (95%)
to online learning is its dependency on Internet availability. Students’ could not concentrate properly andthey were
not satisfied with online assessment (65% & 68% respectively). Even the motivated students answered that
Problem Based Learning sessions were not delivered effectively as it was before when it was by physical
presence (p≤0.000).Community and patients’ care skills could not be developed by online learning instructions
(p≤0.05).
Conclusion: Students learned digital technology and developed metacognitive ability so become more
responsible for their learning tasks as they were before pandemic. As teaching sessions are recorded that helps
them in revision. However, online sessions are not suitable to learn soft skills. Student-patients’ interaction is a
mandatory element in order to learn competency.