key: cord-0814839-n5eglcrv
authors: Vieira, Joaquim Edson; de Matos, Leandro Luongo; de Paula, Enzo Greco; Carrera, Renato Melli
title: Teaching surgery during COVID‐19: The experience of Albert Einstein Medical School, Brazil
date: 2021-03-03
journal: Med Educ
DOI: 10.1111/medu.14481
sha: f851d0fcc4902b6b277f8d439d403477e28dac46
doc_id: 814839
cord_uid: n5eglcrv

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The crisis triggered by the coronavirus outbreak closed universities around the world, including medical schools in Brazil. Academic activities were deferred, and the Albert Einstein Medical School (FICSAE) took two weeks to move from on-site education to online activities.

We selected Zoom [https://zoom.us/pt-pt/meeti ngs.html] for our online learning platform, mostly due to its 'breakout rooms' feature.

The medical education at FICSAE relies on Team-Based Learning (TBL), skills laboratory, hospital practice, lectures and active dialogues through contextualised exercises. The initial concern was how to ensure the assessment of readiness for the TBL sessions, and the assessment of learning was achievable online during the outbreak.

The Faculty Development Committee and the Dean of FICSAE aligned coordinators and instructors to develop and promote a framework to guide online teaching and learning. The team responsible for teaching surgery adapted their activities following three strategies: (a) active online lectures, (b) video exhibitions followed by team activities and 3) team assessment based on clinical scenarios as a surrogate of TBL assessments. Here, we describe these three strategies.

The active online lectures consisted of slide presentations and question times. At every 10 to 15 minutes, the lecturer would present a question to the students to be solved in groups (group discussions occurred via the breakout rooms). These interspersed exercises took approximately 5-10 minutes (5 minutes for group discussion and 1-2 minutes for answers and feedback). This was considered a formative assessment. Following this session, the students were asked to solve a new clinical case in groups within a week after class. We consider this approach as the differential learning activity as the students were asked to provide references from the literature to support their responses. We believe that this approach enhanced the students' awareness of the literature, their ability to search for a focused answer and their critical analysis of the literature.

The most interesting results of this arrangement were the high retention and receptiveness of students during the sessions (120 minutes in length), the consistency of references to support the students' discussions and the two well-received summative tests that relied on the same approach as the TBL assessments. The two summative tests were clinical case-based short answer questions. These questions are an example of the analytic framework. 1 The students achieved high grades compared with the regular process of the past.

Grades were not maximal and showed distinctiveness among the

Frameworks for learner assessment in medicine: AMEE Guide No. 78