From Students to Educators: Peer-assisted Strategies for Continued Medical Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic

To the editor:

In 2017, I wrote a correspondence article reflecting on the role of students in medical education and research [1]. Today, the global COVID-19 pandemic has compelled me to once again reflect on the role of medical students. Around the world, the time-honoured Oslerian method of clinical clerkships and bedside teaching has, at some point, taken a pause, while clinician-educators juggled between responding to the pandemic and adapting medical education to prevailing circumstances. Students, however, have not taken the backseat. Reports of student-led community initiatives have emerged, and some of these are highly innovative, such as organising childcare services for healthcare workers [2] or building a translation portal to facilitate communication between healthcare workers and affected migrant workers [3].

From an education perspective, while these are unique opportunities for learning, it remains imperative to reform current methods of education so that students remain on a trajectory to graduate, especially final-year students who can, on completion, serve at the frontline. To achieve this, Rose outlined several possible strategies, such as the use of virtual clinical cases or modifying the academic calendar to bring forward didactic sessions and scholarly work while deferring clinical rotations [4].

The unanticipated need to produce new material for virtual learning on top of the stretched manpower as clinician-educators are called to serve the frontline, presents a unique challenge. In response to this, students and alumni at my alma mater have tapped on methods of peer-assisted learning. With guidance from the faculty, young alumni write virtual case scenarios and provide feedback on assignments completed by final-year students. In turn, the final-year students have taken the initiative to guide junior students along with their preparation for clinical examinations. Compared to conventional teaching methods, a systematic review has shown that peer-assisted learning can achieve comparable outcomes for learners and even has beneficial effects on learning outcomes for student-teachers [5]. Its long-term impact, however, remains less documented and requires further investigation. I am of the view that this pandemic will have a lasting positive impact on students’ resilience and their identity as educators. I certainly look forward to welcoming them at the workplace.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).