Continuing medical education during a pandemic: an academic institution’s experience

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected healthcare systems worldwide. The disruption to hospital routines has affected continuing medical education (CME) for specialty trainees (STs). We share our academic institution's experience in mitigating the disruption on the CME programme amidst the pandemic. Most specialty training programmes had switched to videoconferencing to maintain teaching. Some programmes also utilized small group teachings with precautions and e-learning modules. Surgical residencies were disproportionately affected due to reductions in elective procedures but some ways to provide continued surgical exposure include going through archived surgical videos with technical pointers from experienced faculty and usage of surgical simulators . We should adapt CME sessions to keep trainees up to date with core clinical competencies as they will continue to manage both COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 cases and this pandemic may last until year's end.