The use of WhatsappⓇ as a way to deliver plastic surgery teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic

Disposition and Challenges of Alternative to Physical Classroom Teaching and Learning in a Pandemic; an Appraisal of Biochemistry Students COVID-19 Learning with WhatsApp

“…These identified challenges are similar to the identified problem and limitation faced by University students in Namibia They submitted in their study that the WhatsApp teaching impacted negatively on learning outcomes and experiences and that there was a variance on balancing online activities and academic preparations especially as it relates to assignment completion [16]. Also of importance is that the challenges faced in the incorporation of WhatsApp to the teaching of biochemistry in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic is not similar to those experienced by students and instructors in teaching of plastic surgery in the United Kingdom and Pharmacy students in Pakistan [9,10].…”

“…As most nations declared compulsory stay at home orders so as to reduce congregation of people which is a ma- jor factor to the transmission of COVID-19, the Nigerian government also rose up to the task especially after putting the challenge faced by our health sector which led to a declaration of immediate vacation of all institutions of learning including primary and tertiary [6,7]. In order to stand up to the challenges being faced and the need to continue academic activities in institutions, most primary, secondary and tertiary institutions gradually started transiting into online and distance learning systems by exploring several e-learning tools including the use of social media apps [8][9][10]. Although this new online learning interface adopted by most school in itself does not end the pandemic, it by all means reduces one on one contact between teachers and students and the proximity of student-student contacts during actual classroom learning since contact and congregation is a major means and factor that promotes the transmission of the disease.…”

“…According to Gon and Rawekar [11] the Whats-App application has features that allow the users to exchange different types of multimedia outside text such as pictures, videos, audios and the feature of dropping offline messages, calls, video calls and group chats of over a 100 persons. It has been successfully employed in the teaching of different courses in higher education which also includes medical education [9,10] Biochemistry is one of the important preclinical courses taken by most health professionals during training [13,14]. The importance of Biochemistry was emphasized in 1977 by Margot Kogut [15] to be the bedrock of clinical practice.…”

Plastic physicians: The surgical salamanders of the COVID-19 pandemic

“…To maintain educational opportunities, we used YouTube, Zoom and WhatsApp R to deliver educational content. 5 In Figure 1 COVID-19 medical patients admitted under plastic surgery.…”

“…To maintain educational opportunities, we used YouTube, Zoom and WhatsApp® to deliver educational content [5] . In addition, our junior doctors provided vital teaching on basic medical tasks such as blood gas and ECG interpretation, completing death certificates and electronic discharge letters to members of our department and to wider audiences in training sessions set up by the Trust.…”