A crisis is an opportunity riding a dangerous wind. (Chinese proverb)

As 2020 draws to a close this, my last editorial, signals hand over to Simon Gay, our new Editor in Chief. I have been so privileged to steer the journal forward for 5 years and to cherish all the wonderful collaborations and friendships built with editors, the EPC board, Taylor & Francis staff and, initially, Radcliffe publications. It has been a true pleasure to work alongside Simon to ensure a smooth transition.

Perhaps I should look back. Yet, I find this impossible. Re-imagining medical education as we face the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is fascinating; positive yet tricky. This Chinese proverb encapsulates, for me, a mixed challenge. The crisis has opened exciting opportunities. Undoubtedly, education delivery will never be the same. But we must not get carried away by focusing only on the pandemic’s impact. Herein lies a potentially dangerous wind.

No one could have envisaged the rapidity with which new technologies have been embraced to both deliver clinical care and educate at a distance. The speed with which blended online learning has emerged has been awesome. Response has been rapid. We were surprised at the increase in submissions seen, in fact, across all education journals. Opportunities have been opened for new approaches to learning at a distance. Useful papers are emerging [1] although, as this BEME guide highlights, we must now look for more robust evaluation of new methodologies.

But these need careful balancing against potential risks. One pitfall to avoid would be to maintain distance and not move back to face-to-face learning in the context of real practice [2]. Much of our clinical learning relies on pattern recognition as we encounter different patients and build and store illness scripts in our brains. Can watching another doctor deal with patients remotely replace this learning? Personally, I doubt so. Primary care is changing but will remain a most valuable resource for ‘hands-on’ experience. The pandemic has brought public health rightly to the fore. Students must understand patients in the setting of their community population. The second pitfall would be to forget we simultaneously face a pandemic of co-morbidity, non-communicable diseases and widening poverty and health inequity. Where better to understand these issues than general practice.

Above all the pandemic has highlighted globally the stress placed on students facing so much uncertainty and educators stretching themselves to create and maintain new learning and assessment platforms[3]. Never has it been more crucial that, as educators, we remain humane and caring of our students and of each other. Pushing education to a distance where students become faceless on Zoom is perhaps the biggest danger the wind of COVID-19 brings.

Encouragingly this last issue of 2020 weaves papers across many aspects of learning at the primary-secondary care interface to support learners at all levels. I retire knowing the journal has a bright future and am confident that it is in the hands of strong professionals who will nurture the level of research we need both to harness new opportunities and ride the potentially dangerous winds. Thank you.