How the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Demonstrated a Need for Increased Leadership Education in Medicine

The Surgical Subinternship: A Unique Opportunity for Early Leadership Development

Subinternships are formative rotations in the surgery-bound medical student's journey to surgical training. This experience allows for further exploration of career goals, plays an important evaluative role in the residency selection process, and offers ongoing opportunities for technical and non-technical development. The graduated responsibility experienced in this setting extends beyond what was experienced during the core surgical clerkship where students are first interfacing with the clinical environment. We review and reflect on the role of subinternships in developing the leadership skills that surgery-bound medical students will need to effectively lead interprofessional healthcare teams in the future.

Leadership Curriculum in Medical Education: Exploring Student and Faculty Perceptions in a US Medical School in Qatar

Purpose

Leadership has long been recognized as a core competency required to excel in medical practice. This qualitative study investigates the extent to which leadership competencies are incorporated in the curriculum of a US medical college in Qatar and examines the perceptions of medical students and faculty about leadership in the medical curriculum.

Methods

The study uses a student survey, faculty interviews, and a student focus group to gather data.

Results

The study found that 79% of the survey respondents perceive leadership as a core competency while 55% feel that leadership skills are not adequately taught to students. The focus group and interviews revealed that students believe more importance should be given to leadership training whereas faculty assert that, while leadership can be beneficial, leadership training is implicit, and more research is required for further implementation.

Conclusion

This study shows the need for an increased emphasis on developing leadership curricula in undergraduate medical education and highlights ways to address certain obstacles to implementation. Further research on exploring medical alumni’s perceptions and optimal teaching methods to implement leadership training is needed.

The COVID crisis impact on open education in the field of healthcare management

This paper aims to explore how the Hellenic Open University managed to adapt to the new normal of the pandemic and particularly what methods it deployed in its postgraduate Healthcare Management program. The first part introduces the key features of the Hellenic Open University and analyzes the strategic policy deployed by the University during the pandemic through the pillars of academic integrity, openness and excellence. The second part presents the research method and findings regarding both instructors and students of the Healthcare Management postgraduate program. The third part concludes that the policy introduced by University had a positive effect overall both to academic staff and healthcare practitioners. The importance and innovation of this study lies in the fact that it emphasizes on adult students who are in their crashing majority healthcare practitioners and thus have already a saying regarding the pandemic's management. The scope of the research was to demonstrate that this student audience had a significant input in the teaching procedure, since they were at the forefront of the pandemic crisis. In this regard, the instructor-student relationship was more than ever reciprocal based on the knowledge of the first and the experience of the latter.