Dermatology residency training in COVID-19 pandemic: Transition from traditional to online teaching

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has placed unprecedented demands on the health profession; and unique challenges are emerging in almost all fields of medicine, including dermatology. This ongoing health crisis has also significantly disrupted medical education globally. As the pandemic continues to develop, traditional medical education of in-person lectures, seminars and bedside teaching is being rapidly replaced by various modalities of online education. This transition was already taking place for last many years in the developed world, but developing countries were experiencing barriers even for its partial implementation. Current challenge of COVID-19 has created an opportunity for these countries to adopt online teaching as a major tool of education. We describe our preliminary experience of this rapid transition, its advantages, challenges faced and future perspectives in a resource-constrained environment and ongoing enormous health crisis of COVID-19.