The Past, Present, and Future of Orthopedic Education: Lessons Learned From the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic has upended nearly every medical discipline, dramatically impacted patient care and has had far-reaching effects on surgeon education. In many areas of the country, elective orthopedic surgery has completely stopped to ensure that resources are available for the critically ill and to minimize the spread of disease. COVID-19 is forcing many around the world to re-evaluate existing processes and organizations and adapt to carry out business, of which medicine and education are not immune. Most national and international orthopedic conferences, training programs, and workshops have been postponed or canceled, and we are now critically evaluating the delivery of education to our colleagues as well as residents and fellows. This article describes the evolution of orthopedic education and significant paradigm shifts necessary to continue to teach ourselves and the future leaders of our noble profession.

Managing resident workforce and residency training amid COVID-19 pandemic: Scoping review of adaptive approaches

“…We retained 13 documents for scoping review according to prede ned inclusion criteria. Three were articles,5 short or special communications and the rest editorials and perspectives (See Table 3 below) Nine documents have reported on resident sta ng and safety amid COVID-19 (6,(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(16)(17)(18).…”

“…Besides residents must be trained in infection prevention in a clinical setting including appropriate use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and personal hygiene (16,20). This training can be conducted online via different virtual platforms (10,11,20). Many recommend creating social media platforms communications such as Twitter, Instagram, and Slack to keep residents and staff stay in communication with each other to ease fear and anxiety about the pandemic (16,17).…”

“…The shutdown of elective surgeries caused a signi cant decrease in the amount of time in the operating room which will not be replaced by simple academic conferences and telehealth. Many residency programs had instituted alternative surgical teaching methods during COVID-19 (6,8,10,11,13,17,19). Emory University School of Medicine are using virtual reality or simulation training for orthopedic surgical education.…”

“…Nine of identi ed records reported on alternative virtual didactic residency education during COVID-19 (6,7,10,11,13,(15)(16)(17)(18). These virtual didactics include virtual lectures, journal clubs, ipped virtual classrooms, and teleconferences.…”

“…The pandemic is affecting the current accreditation process and will have an undue effect to get minimum case log or minimum activity volume (MAV) required to graduate and sit for board examinations (20). America Board of Orthopedic Surgery(ABOS) suspended all current accreditation process but states that graduation is left to the discretion of the program director (10). ABOS swiftly responded to the pandemic crisis by increasing the "time away" from residency training activities from 4 to 6 weeks per academic year to provide exibility and also stressed that program directors to work to make sure residents meet Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) minimum case requirements necessary to graduate and sit for board examinations (10,20).…”