Impact of COVID-19 on Canadian anesthesia resident matching: challenges and opportunities for applicants
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CORRESPONDENCE
Impact of COVID-19 on Canadian anesthesia resident matching: challenges and opportunities for applicants Kacper Niburski, BSc, MA . David-Dan Nguyen, DEC, MPH . Pablo Ingelmo, MD . Natalie Buu, MD, CM, FRCPSC
Received: 19 October 2020 / Revised: 22 November 2020 / Accepted: 23 November 2020 Ó Canadian Anesthesiologists’ Society 2020
To the Editor, Medical students are integral to healthcare’s future. Nevertheless, their role during a pandemic is largely unclear. With the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) a pandemic on 11 March 2020, and all medical schools in Canada subsequently suspending their clerkships,1 numerous challenges have been presented to prospective anesthesia residency applicants. These challenges are especially heightened with the additional COVID-19-related droplet and aerosol transmission precautions, and numerous other sterile protocols in the operating room (OR) that often prevent students being in the OR. As affected students, we would like to address numerous challenges for Canadian medical students seeking clinical exposure to specialties that they might be interested in for residency training, including anesthesiology. Educational exposure during the pandemic has been limited at all levels of training. Rios Medina and Salazar noted that exposure to regional anesthesia education was particularly affected, in part because of the focus on only well-trained physicians performing regional blocks to reduce block failure, complications, and overall risk of exposure when treating COVID-19 patients.2 While residents were particularly affected, it also reduced teaching and other opportunities for students to participate in blocks. This reduction in experiential
K. Niburski, BSc, MA (&) D.-D. Nguyen, DEC, MPH Faculty of Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada e-mail: [email protected] P. Ingelmo, MD N. Buu, MD, CM, FRCPSC Department of Pediatric Anaesthesia, McGill University Health Center, Montreal, QC, Canada
anesthesia education is compounded for medical students where much of the ongoing teaching has been transferred to web-based systems or video conferencing.3 Video-based learning does not allow for teaching of in-person procedures such as intubation or vascular cannulation. With some ORs operating only at a limited capacity,2 there is also less opportunity for on-site training. In previous pandemics (e.g., H1N1 in 2004), electives were cancelled.3 As a result, the Canadian Residency Matching Service restructured the match process by delaying deadlines, changing interview months, and delaying the release of match results.3 COVID-19 is similar, with only home-institution electives being offered. It has been previously noted that a student’s performance during an elective was a main indicator of how they would match in Canada.4 Without the ability to take visiting electives, there is less opportunity for nonhome programs to assess applicants from other schools. It is currently unclear what other objective measures (e.g., re
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