Testing Boundaries COVID-19 made the USMLE, Clerkships a Moving Target for Med Students

Tex Med. 2020 Aug 1;116(8):34.

Abstract

Medical schools typically have predictable schedules. The timing of lectures, clerkships, exams, and even extracurricular activities tend to follow in the same grooves year after year. Students can reliably block out even minor events months ahead of time and be confident they'll take place. All that changed with COVID-19. Since March, when the pandemic began closing down schools, businesses, and other institutions across the state, figuring out what comes next in medical school has been anything but predictable.

MeSH terms

  • Betacoronavirus
  • Burnout, Psychological / psychology
  • COVID-19
  • Clinical Competence
  • Communicable Disease Control / organization & administration*
  • Coronavirus Infections* / epidemiology
  • Coronavirus Infections* / prevention & control
  • Disease Transmission, Infectious / prevention & control
  • Humans
  • Organizational Innovation
  • Pandemics* / prevention & control
  • Pneumonia, Viral* / epidemiology
  • Pneumonia, Viral* / prevention & control
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Schools, Medical* / ethics
  • Schools, Medical* / organization & administration
  • Schools, Medical* / trends
  • Stress, Psychological / etiology*
  • Students, Medical / psychology*
  • Teaching / ethics
  • Teaching / psychology
  • Texas / epidemiology
  • Uncertainty