Letter: COVID-19 Impact on the Medical Student Path to Neurosurgery

Chae, John K.; Haghdel, Arsalan; Guadix, Sergio W.; Winston, Graham; Younus, Iyan; Radwanski, Ryan E.; Schwartz, Theodore H.; Greenfield, Jeffrey P.; Apuzzo, Michael L.J.; Pannullo, Susan C.

doi:10.1093/neuros/nyaa187

Cited by 30 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…As an example, our institution has established a collaborative neurosurgery publication group. 12 Weekly virtual meetings are held to discuss ongoing projects, brainstorm new ideas, and foster mentorship with faculty. Figure 2.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical Student Concerns Relating to Neurosurgery Education During COVID-19

et al. 2020

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BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created significant obstacles within medical education. For medical students interested in pursuing neurosurgery as a specialty, the educational policies surrounding COVID-19 have resulted in unique challenges. The present study used a nationwide survey to identify the concerns of medical students interested in pursuing neurosurgery during the COVID-19 pandemic.-METHODS: Students who had previously registered for medical student neurosurgery training camps were sent an online Qualtrics survey requesting them to assess how the COVID-19 pandemic was affecting their neurosurgical education. The Pearson c 2 test and post hoc pairwise Fisher exact test were used for analysis of categorical variables, and the 2tailed paired Student t test was used for continuous variables.-RESULTS: The survey was distributed to 852 medical students, with 127 analyzed responses. Concerns regarding conferences and networking opportunities (63%), clinical experience (59%), and board examination scores (42%) were most frequently cited. Of the third-year medical students, 76% reported ‡1 cancelled or postponed neurosurgery rotation. On average, students were more likely to take 1 year off from medical school after than before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, measured from 0 to 100 (25.3 AE 36.0 vs. 39.5 AE 37.5; P [ 0.004). Virtual mentorship pairing was the highest rated educational intervention suggested by first-and second-year medical students. The third-and fourth-year medical students had cited virtual surgical skills workshops most frequently.-CONCLUSIONS: The results from the present nationwide survey have highlighted the concerns of medical students regarding their neurosurgery education during the COVID-19 pandemic. With these findings, neurosurgery organizations can consider targeted plans for students of each year to continue their education and development.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical Student Concerns Relating to Neurosurgery Education During COVID-19

et al. 2020

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“…The student group most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic is undoubtedly students in their final year, due to restricted patient contact, reduced bed-side teaching and even cancelled clerkships [8,[18][19][20][21]. Therefore, it is unsurprising that 87.0% of the final year students in this study reported a negative influence on their clinical education.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Involvement of Medical Students During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey Study

Drexler¹,

Hambrecht²,

Oldhafer³

2020

Cureus

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Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affects the education of medical students around the world and countries have had differing responses in dealing with this dynamic situation. The role of medical students in fighting this pandemic is controversial and it is yet to be elucidated how they can best be of service. The aim of this study is to evaluate the working fields of volunteering students and the impact of the pandemic on final year students from a student's perspective. Methods: An anonymous online survey was conducted amongst 219 medical students from Hamburg (Germany), using an institutional online data collection program. Results: A total of 137 questionnaires (63.5%) were completed. Of these, 97 participants were students from academic year three to five (70.8%) and 40 students were in the final year of medical school (29.2%). Of the 97 students from academic year three to five, 68 students (70.1%) signed up for voluntary duties during the pandemic. Interestingly, only 25.0% of the students were called for voluntary work in hospitals or health authorities. Final year students had already been working in hospitals since before the outbreak, with 35.0% of them assisting doctors in the treatment of COVID-19 positive patients during their placements. Using a 5-Point Likert Scale, the students who volunteered self-assessed their work as more useful and received more gratitude than final year students (p<0.01). Conclusions: The majority of medical students are willing to make a significant contribution in the response to COVID-19 and do not wish to be overlooked. Furthermore, the current pandemic offers novel educational opportunities for medical students.

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“…When the published articles from the same journals within the same time frame were categorized into COVID-19 pandemic related and non-related, just under 7% of all new article submissions during the pandemic time period were COVID-19 related. There are two ways in which the sharp increases in original submissions can be interpreted: that this is a natural consequence of an increased amount of untapped topics that have now been made available to explore in the wake of COVID-19, 17 or that this is a consequence of the unprecedentedly increased time neurosurgeons, stroke neurologists, neurointerventionalists, and trainees have had due to the reductions in the clinical and surgical workload. Both may, in part, help to explain the 2020 surge, yet the relatively small percentage of COVID-19 related articles in comparison with the total number of articles published seems to lend more credence to the latter interpretation that academic physicians across the globe have used this unstructured time to advance scientific knowledge.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in academic productivity in the COVID-19 era: analysis of neurosurgical, stroke neurology, and neurointerventional literature

Lee

Mohanty

Albuquerque

et al. 2020

J NeuroIntervent Surg

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BackgroundAcademic physicians aim to provide clinical and surgical care to their patients while actively contributing to a growing body of scientific literature. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in procedural-based specialties across the United States witnessing a sharp decline in their clinical volume and surgical cases.ObjectiveTo assess the impact of COVID-19 on neurosurgical, stroke neurology, and neurointerventional academic productivity.MethodsThe study compared the neurosurgical, stroke neurology, and neurointerventional academic output during the pandemic lockdown with the same time period in previous years. Editors from a sample of neurosurgical, stroke neurology, and neurointerventional journals provided the total number of original manuscript submissions, broken down by months, from the year 2016 to 2020. Manuscript submission was used as a surrogate metric for academic productivity.Results8 journals were represented. The aggregated data from all eight journals as a whole showed that a combined average increase of 42.3% was observed on original submissions for 2020. As the average yearly percent increase using the 2016–2019 data for each journal exhibited a combined average increase of 11.2%, the rise in the yearly increase for 2020 in comparison was nearly fourfold. For the same journals in the same time period, the average percent of COVID-19 related publications from January to June of 2020 was 6.87%.ConclusionThere was a momentous increase in the number of original submissions for the year 2020, and its effects were uniformly experienced across all of our represented journals.

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Letter: COVID-19 Impact on the Medical Student Path to Neurosurgery

Cited by 30 publications

References 4 publications

Medical Student Concerns Relating to Neurosurgery Education During COVID-19

Medical Student Concerns Relating to Neurosurgery Education During COVID-19

Involvement of Medical Students During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey Study

Trends in academic productivity in the COVID-19 era: analysis of neurosurgical, stroke neurology, and neurointerventional literature

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