The aim of this systematic review was to identify the challenges imposed on medical and surgical education by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the proposed innovations enabling the continuation of medical student and resident training. A systematic review on the MEDLINE and EMBASE databases was performed on April 18th, 2020, and yielded 1288 articles. Sixty-one of the included manuscripts were synthesized in a qualitative description focused on two major axes, "challenges" and "innovative solutions", and two minor axes, "mental health" and "medical students in the frontlines". Shortage of personal protective equipment, suspension of clinical clerkships and observerships and reduction in elective surgical cases unavoidably affect medical and surgical education. Interesting solutions involving the use of virtual learning, videoconferencing, social media and telemedicine could effectively tackle the sudden cease in medical education. Furthermore, trainee's mental health should be safeguarded, and medical students can be involved in the COVID-19 clinical treatment if needed. In December 2019, a case series of a novel type of pneumonia was reported in Wuhan, China. The causing viral agent was identified as a novel betacoronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2, and the respective infection was named as "Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)". As of today, COVID-19 has affected world health to an unprecedented degree. More than 2.44 million cases and 165,000 deaths worldwide have been reported as of 20th April 2020 (1). The pandemic and subsequent mitigation measures have severely impacted all but the most essential activities, effectively shutting down operations in commerce and services. Education has also been disproportionately affected, as the congregation of the youngest members of the community in closed spaces can significantly contribute to the spread of the virus. In total, more that 900 million learners in all levels of education, including higher education, have been affected (2, 3). Medical education equips clinicians with the knowledge and skills to provide safe healthcare to patients. Those receiving medical education do so, ultimately to provide this service to patients, an essential process to ensure a competent workforce. However, those recipients have responsibilities primarily towards service provision and supporting their health system, particularly in times of crisis. This is exemplified by the shutdown of academic institutions worldwide, reallocation of academic trainees into clinical roles and cessation of mandatory training and teaching. Many trainees have been prevented from rotating into new specialties or training positions and supplementary research and audit work that is not essential has been postponed. The aforementioned measures, whilst drastic for medical education, are seen as necessary to ensure health systems can cope with the burden COVID-19.

In light of the current shifts in medical education from traditional lectures to more active teaching modalities, a peer‐teaching program was introduced to a compulsory, second‐year neuroanatomy course. A cross‐sectional survey of 527 medical students in the six‐year medical program of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens was administered. The primary aim of the survey, which was distributed to second‐ through sixth‐year medical students, who had completed the neuroanatomy course, was to assess student perception of peer teachers (PTs). Across the five years assessed, students increasingly acknowledged the contribution of PTs to their learning (P < 0.001). Attributes of PTs (e.g., contribution to learning, motivation, effective usage of material, and team environment) were significantly related to the student's opinion of the importance of laboratory activities (P < 0.001). Students who received “average” final grades scored the importance of laboratory exercises, and by inference PTs, significantly lower than students who received “excellent” final grades (P < 0.05). The amount of training that PTs had received was also significantly related to student perceptions of a PT's contribution. Better trained PTs were associated with significantly higher scores regarding learning, motivation, and positive environment compared to less trained PTs (P < 0.05). The results of the present study show that peer‐teaching was well received by students attending the neuroanatomy course. While the results express the evolution of the program across the years, the findings also show that learners believed that PTs and the laboratory program contributed significantly to their understanding of neuroanatomy.

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