In Lebanon “It Never Rains But It Pours”—How the American University of Beirut faced dangers and seized opportunities: Transforming medical education through multiple crises

Abstract

Higher education and healthcare are in the eye of the health, economic, and political storms induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the questions that have been raised had been lingering incipiently, but others are legitimately new and specific to the very natures of the healing professions and their educational components. Forced to adapt to the pandemic and the collapse of the Lebanese economy and socio-political structure, the American University of Beirut Faculty of Medicine is evolving in order to survive while enhancing undergraduate and graduate medical education.