Perspectives of medical students on medical education services during the COVID-19 pandemic in India

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic had a disruptive effect on medical education services. Many medical schools curbed clinical interaction and replaced in-person classes with online methods. Baring a few review articles, research articles in this domain are scare. This study was done in the present context to understand the perspectives of the medical students on the different teaching methods adopted and the acceptability of those mechanisms from the view of the end-users is novel. Materials and Methods: This study was undertaken between 1 May 2020 to 15 May 2020 in 600-bed tertiary care teaching hospital in India having affiliation for both undergraduate and postgraduate medical teaching. A pre-structured questionnaire was randomly distributed to 500 students by sharing a link in the email addresses of the students. Data were entered and analysed in the Microsoft Excel 2010 using descriptive statistics. Results: So far as the different methods of online teaching are concerned, the Interactive online sessions were attended by 59.5% of the study respondents, 28.3% of the study respondents mentioned attending webinars while uploaded lectures were attended by 12.2% study respondents. 150 (57.3%) of the respondents mentioned that the online training sessions were equally effective as in-person training classes. However, a sizeable proportion of 90 (34.3%) respondents mentioned that the online training sessions were less effective. Conclusion: Though technology has been rapidly and innovatively used to ensure medical education services continue unhindered, it has thrown up major challenges. These challenges need to be addressed immediately if we need to reap its benefits in future. © IJCRR.