Clinical Competencies of Final Year Medical Students during Covid-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant effect on medical students in their clinical years. Due to restrictions on in-person clinical rotations, medical students in these years have had limited or no exposure to clinical and hospital environments, which is critical for developing clinical competency. Lack of practical experience as a consequence may limit their ability to carry out specific clinical procedures. Due to the pandemic, many medical colleges had to postpone or cancel clinical rotations. This has caused medical students to advance more slowly and to take longer to acquire clinical proficiency. A greater focus is being placed on virtual learning, including virtual clinical simulations, as a result of the pandemic. These alternative methods of education and training were more suited to the earlier clinical years of undergraduate medical schools. Although virtual simulations can be useful, they cannot match the degree of experience offered by real-world clinical rotations which may affect the development of clinical competency. The assessment of clinical competency pre and post COVID-19 requires careful consideration on medical education and clinical practice. This scoping review examines the literature in respect of the impact of COVID-19 under clinical competencies of medical students. The key aspect here is that the students had limited or no access to hospital clinical rotation. The impact of this was that medical schools developed alternative methods of training online to replace this clinical experience. The important point is that most literature looks at the assessment methods for this new clinically experience. What I have attempted to examine is the gaps in the literature for the evaluate of competencies for students in their clinical years during Covid-19.