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Abstract Number: 4019
Impact of COVID-19 on psychiatry medical student education and healthcare delivery -perspective of a smaller size psychiatry department

Impact of COVID-19 on psychiatry medical student education and healthcare delivery -perspective of a smaller size psychiatry department
Poster
Yes
Curriculum Development and Education
Jessica Nelson
marina.chavez@ttuhsc.edu
The global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic significantly impacted every aspect of personal and professional life in almost every area of industry imaginable. Healthcare delivery and medical student education was especially affected and required medical schools and programs to come up with innovative ways to sustain teaching and learning during these unprecedented times. Medical students faced uncertainty, anxiety and fear regarding curriculum changes, ability to perform well on board tests and evaluations during the pandemic.The lack of face to face learning, opportunity to interact with residents and attendings as well as difficulty in evaluating medical students are only some of the challenges faced during the pandemic. Medical student education historically has been an apprenticeship and this model has worked well to ensure the development of future physicians. This model of learning has been hard to replicate by utilizing other modes of learning such as live streaming lectures or posting recorded sessions on social media platforms such as YouTube. 



The COVID-19 pandemic has taught medical schools and psychiatry departments across the United States how to utilize resources available to ensure ongoing medical student education while at the same time delivering quality care to patients, maintaining patient privacy and confidentiality and mitigating risk of spread of the virus.



This paper reflects the various innovative ways our residency program adapted and developed resources to maintain excellent service delivery to patients while ensuring medical student education on their psychiatry rotation. Some of the ways included utilizing telemedicine technology applications such as Zoom, development of a COVID-19 curriculum and maintaining constant communication and mentorship with residents and attending physicians.



Other changes and difficulties faced during the pandemic are as follow:

Here are some changes that happened.

  1. Abrupt interruption of clinical rotation for period 5

  2. Other rotations moved to online education. Psychiatry did it for one week then proceeded with Telemed.

  3. Students had to take screen shot of there completed online activity for us to have record to verify. There was not really an easily accessible  psychiatry online activity as opposed to Aquifier for Pediatrics and Family Medicine.

  4.  Had to review expectation of student participation in Telemedicine and develop student agreement/acknowledgement.

  5. Had to abruptly move to Zoom for didactic.

  6. Rotation 6 started with Telemedicine. Returned for last 4 weeks in person.

  7. OSCE was on a Sim type of zoom.

  8. Rotation 5 and 6 pass/fail.


Separate and apart from challenges faced to medical students, the department of Psychiatry also had to quickly adapt to oncoming government policies regarding wearing of masks, stay at home orders as well as keep track of reimbursement policies from CMS for use of telemedicine. Despite the challenges, the department faired well and was able to fulfill its missions.

 
1. Ferrel, M. N., & Ryan, J. J. (2020). The Impact of COVID-19 on Medical Education. Cureus, 12(3), e7492. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.7492
2.Calhoun, K. E., Yale, L. A., Whipple, M. E., Allen, S. M., Wood, D. E., & Tatum, R. P. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on medical student surgical education: Implementing extreme pandemic response measures in a widely distributed surgical clerkship experience. American journal of surgery, S0002-9610(20)30229-4. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjsurg.2020.04.024
3Ullah, R., & Amin, S. (2020). The psychological impact of COVID-19 on medical students [Letter]. Psychiatry research, 288, 113020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113020
Academic Psychiatry
Residents, Fellows, and Medical Students

Submitter Only


Ashish  
K.  
Sarangi  
MD  
ashish.sarangi@ttuhsc.edu  

POSTER PRESENTER
Ashish  
K.  
Sarangi  
MD  
ashish.sarangi@ttuhsc.edu  

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