The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on medical student education: Implementation and outcome of a virtual general surgery curriculum.

BACKGROUND: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, medical schools were forced to adapt clinical curricula. The University of Washington School of Medicine created a hybrid in person and virtual general surgery clerkship. METHODS: The third year general surgery clerkship was modified to a 4-week in person and 2-week virtual clerkship to accommodate the same number of learners in less time. All students completed a survey to assess the impact of the virtual clerkship. RESULTS: The students preferred faculty lectures over national modules in the virtual clerkship. 58.6% indicated they would prefer the virtual component before the in-person experience. There was no change from previous years in final grades or clerkship exam scores after this hybrid curriculum. CONCLUSIONS: If the need for a virtual general surgery curriculum arises again in the future, learners value this experience at the beginning of the clerkship and prefer faculty lectures over national modules.

Expanding clinical medical training opportunities at the University of Nairobi: adapting a regional medical education model from the WWAMI program at the University of Washington.

A major medical education need in Sub-Saharan Africa includes expanding clinical training opportunities to develop health professionals. Medical education expansion is a complicated process that requires significant investment of financial and human resources, but it can also provide opportunities for innovative approaches and partnerships. In 2010, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief launched the Medical Education Partnership Initiative to invest in medical education and health system strengthening in Africa. Building on a 30-year collaborative clinical and research training partnership, the University of Nairobi in Kenya developed a pilot regional medical education program modeled on the WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho) medical education program at the University of Washington in the United States. The University of Nairobi adapted key elements of the WWAMI model to expand clinical training opportunities without requiring major capital construction of new buildings or campuses. The pilot program provides short-term clinical training opportunities for undergraduate students and recruits and trains clinical faculty at 14 decentralized training sites. The adaptation of a model from the Northwestern United States to address medical education needs in Kenya is a successful transfer of knowledge and practices that can be scaled up and replicated across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Challenges and opportunities in building a sustainable rural primary care workforce in alignment with the Affordable Care Act: the WWAMI program as a case study.

The authors examine the potential impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) on a large medical education program in the Northwest United States that builds the primary care workforce for its largely rural region. The 42-year-old Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho (WWAMI) program, hosted by the University of Washington School of Medicine, is one of the nation's most successful models for rural health training. The program has expanded training and retention of primary care health professionals for the region through medical school education, graduate medical education, a physician assistant training program, and support for practicing health professionals.The ACA and resulting accountable care organizations (ACOs) present potential challenges for rural settings and health training programs like WWAMI that focus on building the health workforce for rural and underserved populations. As more Americans acquire health coverage, more health professionals will be needed, especially in primary care. Rural locations may face increased competition for these professionals. Medical schools are expanding their positions to meet the need, but limits on graduate medical education expansion may result in a bottleneck, with insufficient residency positions for graduating students. The development of ACOs may further challenge building a rural workforce by limiting training opportunities for health professionals because of competing demands and concerns about cost, efficiency, and safety associated with training. Medical education programs like WWAMI will need to increase efforts to train primary care physicians and increase their advocacy for student programs and additional graduate medical education for rural constituents.