COVID-19 and Medical Education: A Four-Part Model to Assess Risks, Benefits, and Institutional Obligations During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

The practice of medicine carries inherent risks, especially during outbreaks of highly contagious diseases like Ebola, H1N1, tuberculosis, and COVID-19. Exposure risks remain and extend to medical students and resident/fellows functioning in clinical settings and create ethical dilemmas around service vs. potential risks of illness. At the time of an unprecedented crisis in the US healthcare system, institutional leaders and medical educators are tasked with meeting patient care demands and ensuring the health and well-being of learners across the medical education continuum, while preventing stagnation in their education and promoting their professional growth. In this commentary, we offer a framework to guide medical schools and teaching hospitals leaders’ decisions around the deployment of these learners during the pandemic. To create the framework, we drew on information about minimizing the risks in inherently dangerous industries, practice during earlier outbreaks of dangerous infectious disease and guidance from ethics experts. We provide examples of how this risk framework can be applied to specific situations where medical students and residents/fellows function in a clinical context.