ABSTRACT
Introduction: The SARS-CoV2 pandemic impacted numerous aspects of medical practice, including continuingmedical education. In-person and single-institution educational formats could not address the challenges of socialdistancing, heterogeneous regional experiences, and continuously emerging data. The vulnerability of cancerpatients to SARS-CoV2 added further urgency to overcoming these barriers. To fulfill these unmet educational andpatient care needs, we established a novel cross-institutional trainee-driven, on-line collaborative for the purpose ofgenerating multidisciplinary seminars on emerging best practices for the acute management of patients with SARS-CoV2. Methods: The COVID Learning Initiative is currently managed by clinical trainees and faculty from 13 institutionsacross 10 states. Weekly Zoom conferences were led by a rotating team consisting of 2-3 fellows overseen by 4-5expert faculty from throughout the country. Format consisted of two 15-minute instructional segments presented bytrainees, followed by a concluding 30-minute faculty Q&A panel moderated by a trainee. Attendees completedbaseline demographics, SARS-CoV2 experience surveys, and pre/post conference knowledge questions.Conferences were recorded and archived to enhance access and dissemination of knowledge. Results: Within 6 weeks and beginning just 2 weeks after inception we produced five 1-hour-longmultidisciplinary video conferences covering emerging antiviral therapies, coagulopathy, pulmonary complications, provider resilience, and ethics of resource scarcity. On average, there were 100 participants per seminar. Post-conference questioning consistently demonstrated acquisition of knowledge across topics and disciplines. Attendeesalso improved in their self-assessed comfort managing multidisciplinary aspects of SARS-CoV2. Overall, presentingcollaborations involved 11 fellows and 28 faculty representing 6 medical specialties and 17 institutions. Severalcollaborations persisted, resulting in further dissemination of knowledge with tangible outcomes such as generationof peer-reviewed manuscripts. Conclusions: The COVID Learning Initiative demonstrated a novel continuing medical education platform capableof rapidly disseminating knowledge at a national scale, while realizing new opportunities for remote traineementoring and skills development. With initial feasibility and continued interest among participating institutions, COVID Learning Initiative plans to evolve to Fellows ACHIEVE: Alliance for Collaborative Hematology OncologyInter-Institutional Education through Videoconferencing to conduct an extended multi-institutional educational serieson adapting cancer management and training program best practices.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 health crisis that is plaguing the world today will have irreversible consequences for the world of education. It is therefore inexcusable that the educational community in general, and education professionals in particular, face a profound analysis of the change in the pedagogical narrative with which we are going to have to build the future. The nature of the first reflection, which -without doubt- will be followed by many others, leads us to frame the reflection around three basic axes of the teaching-learning processes: what we teach or what we should teach, how we teach it, and what we think is more important, if possible, what we should teach for or what should be the precise objective of our education. We are committed to moving from a model focused on results, on the accumulation of content and on memorization in the face of strictly academic evaluation, to another where the center is located in the competent learning of students, in the acquisition of skills and training of resources, social and personal, that allow us to face the adversities of life. Transmit knowledge and teach to "earn a living", no doubt, but educate to "understand life" in a world in permanent change, too. Citizenship, coexistence, equity, social justice, integration of the digital, emotional management, resilience, affective closeness, or hope, will be some of the necessary vectors for winning the future of education. © 2020 Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.