Well-being variations on students of health sciences related to their learning opportunities, resources, and daily activities in an online and on-crisis context: a survey-based study.

BACKGROUND: Universities' training process intensely relies on face-to-face education. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted it and forced them to reinvent their process online. But this crisis seems not to be the last we will face, and we take it as a lesson to prepare for future crises. These critical contexts are especially challenging because they imply changing teaching strategies, and students may not have the technology access or the living conditions to connect as they need. They also lived through a pandemic where the virus and the life changes added stress to their learning process and threatened their well-being. So, this study aims to analyze how well-being variations reported by Health sciences students relate to their learning opportunities, access conditions, and daily activities. METHOD: We surveyed 910 Health sciences students from six different Chilean universities at the end of the first semester of 2020, the first in pandemic conditions. Respondents answered online questionnaires about 1) Remote teaching activities, 2) Learning resources availability, 3) Daily life activities, and 4) Well-being changes. We performed descriptive analysis and Structural Equation Modelling. RESULTS: Live videoconference classes were the most frequent teaching activity; only a third of the students had quiet spaces to study online, and most had to housekeep daily. More than two third reported some well-being deterioration. The structural equation model showed a good fit. CONCLUSION: Results show an online learning scenario that tries to emulate traditional learning focusing on expositive strategies. Most students reported that their well-being deteriorated during the semester, but tutorials, workplace availability, and social support were protective factors.

The training of a new social-responsible generation of health professionals with a patient-centered vision.

The challenges that Latin America faces in health are deeply related to others, such as access to clean water, the right to education, and housing. Health professionals that work in an environment where the population faces constant barriers to accessing care in the public health system or has limited resources to pay for it in a private sector will face an ethical dilemma, the question of how to honor the call to care for patients when there is not enough support system or infrastructure to do so. Within the schools of medicine and health sciences, the question is how to train students to face or resolve these conflicts. The social responsibility approach is a proposal that allows the alignment of education for health professionals and health systems to contribute to the creation of an effective, equitable, and sustainable system. The present article aims to discuss this problem from the importance of training health professionals, ethical and committed to their communities, that have the skills and attitudes to implement a patient-centered vision. The involvement of universities and training institutions of the next generation of health professionals cannot be postponed.

Satisfaction with remote teaching during the first semester of the COVID-19 crisis: Psychometric properties of a scale for health students.

INTRODUCTION: Due to the health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, 220 million college students in the world had to halt face-to-face teaching and migrate to what has been called Emergency Remote Teaching, using virtual media, but without adequate preparation. The way this has impacted the student body and its satisfaction with the training process is unknown and there are no instruments backed by specific validity and reliability studies for this teaching context. This is why this study aims to analyze the psychometric properties of the Remote Teaching Satisfaction Scale applied to Chilean health sciences students. METHOD: Quantitative study by means of surveys. We surveyed 1,006 health careers undergraduates chosen by convenience sampling. They came from six Chilean universities, located over a distance of 3,020 kilometers and followed 7 different careers. Women comprised the 78.53%. They answered the Remote Teaching Satisfaction Scale online to evaluate their perception of the first Emergency Remote Teaching term in 2020. RESULTS: A descriptive analysis of the items showed a moderate to positive evaluation of the teaching. The Confirmatory Factorial Analysis showed an adequate adjustment of the theoretical four factors model to the data obtained (CFI = 0.959; TLI = 0.953; RMSEA = 0.040). Correlations among factors oscillated from r = 0.21 to r = 0.69. The measurement invariance analysis supported the Configural, Metric and a partial Scalar model. Differences were found in three of the four factors when comparing the first-year students with those of later years. Finally, the Cronbach's α and McDonald's ω coefficients were over 0.70. DISCUSSION: The results display initial psychometric evidence supporting the validity and reliability of the Remote Teaching Satisfaction Scale to assess academic satisfaction in Chilean health careers students. Likewise, it is seen that first-year students show higher satisfaction levels about the implemented teaching.