Effects of Coronavirus Pandemic And Digital Learning On Medical Students

The coronavirus has brought about changes in the education system with the implementation of the most effective strategy to prevent COVID 19, which is social distancing. Schools have been closed, resulting in technology as an alternative to the usual classrooms. This was done to avoid students from acquiring and spreading the virus.

The use of technology has a significant effect on medical students. “If the higher education sector believes that digital learning should replace contact teaching and learning, it runs the risk of producing highly qualified people with severely underdeveloped human or social skills. They will just be robots”, said Dr Sizwe Mabizela, the vice-chancellor of Rhodes University in South Africa.

Video conferencing can be used when demonstrating medical procedures and techniques, but is it really enough for future doctors? They need a lot of practical experience. Clinical rotations for undergraduates have been suspended; combined teaching sessions have been stopped, interhospital residency rotation has been ceased.

This harms hands-on surgical experience disrupting medical training. Clinical exposure is reduced; therefore, technology is not the way to go, but it should complement traditional learning, which is the classroom.

Medical students need real-life lessons. They have to have all the required skills as they are essential attributes for the medical students as they are the future health care leaders. However, it is not practical to keep medical students in hospitals due to lack of protective clothing.

Digital learning for a medical student might become a challenge for providing patients experience, and yet no one is certain about how long this pandemic will last. Suspension of training indefinitely is unnecessary and not practical.

There should be a way to maintain quality medical education amid this COVID 19 pandemic; there has to be a way to let the medical students continue learning as people might have to learn to live healthy lives during this COVID 19 era since there is no guarantee it will disappear anytime soon.