The effect of the covid-19 pandemic lockdown on medical education in Nigeria

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic which shutdown the nation in March 2020, healthcare systems in global epicenters experienced an unprecedented burden of a fast-moving contagion in form of the novel coronavirus. Schools and Universities were shut down as countries implemented mandatory lockdown. Medical students returned to their home bases across the globe but unlike students in the industrialized world, Nigerian students were not equipped to continue learning. The lack of technology and faculty with pre-requisite skills to scale teaching to a digital platform amongst other challenges grounded medical education in Nigeria.
Nigeria will need to catch up with the West by implementing strategies to train the educators on digital teaching and upgrade the medical schools to be compliant with digital training protocols. The Federal Ministry of Health needs to incorporate a uniform Learning Management System across all the Teaching hospitals such that cross content can be utilized for medical training and engage the technology sector as partners to provide technical support and cyber security. The structure of the medical education partnership initiative (MEPI) with one of its three aims being to strengthen in-country medical education systems, could be a starting point. The Federal Ministry of Health should be able to utilize the Tertiary Education Trust Fund to support technological advances in medical education in Nigeria.