Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Medical Education
Date Submitted: Jul 2, 2020
Date Accepted: Jul 27, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Oct 29, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Education of Plastic Surgery Trainees in the United States.
ABSTRACT
The current coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has vastly impacted the healthcare in the United States and is continuing to dictate its unprecedented influence on the education systems, especially the residency and fellowship training programs. The impact of COVID-19 on the residency and fellowship trainings has not been equal across the board; and amongst them, plastic surgery residency and fellowship programs are one of the hardest hit specialties. With social distancing regulations implemented, departmental educational activities including pre-operative, morbidity and mortality (M&M) conferences and journal clubs, as well as education in the operating room (OR) have all been impacted as is the overall training of plastic surgery trainees in the United States. Almost all elective and semi-elective surgeries across the United States were suspended for a period of a few months (this constitutes a significant portion of plastic surgery cases). Considering the current staged reopening policies, it may be a long time, if ever, before restrictions are completely lifted. In the current paper, the authors review the multidimensional impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on the training of the plastic surgical residents/fellows in the United States and worldwide, along with some potential solutions on how to tackle these issues.
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Copyright
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