The impact of COVID-19 on Medical education and Medical Students. How and when can they return to placements?

The defining feature of 2020 will be the early and mid-stages of the covid-19 pandemic, declared by the World Health Organisation on 11th March. Rapid worldwide exponential spread continues and by 15 April, more than 1 900 000 cases and 123 000 deaths had been reported worldwide (WHO, 2020). Health services have coped to varying degrees. One common feature has been the withdrawal of routine care (Iacobucci, 2020a) and ‘non-essential’ staff including learners, although many have returned to undertake care roles. As the likely timeframe for stabilisation of health services becomes clearer, certainly in the United Kingdom (UK) (Iacobucci, 2020b), medical educators need to rapidly get the teaching of the next generation of health care workers back on track if they are to enter health services as confident and competent practitioners in 2020 and 2021. Although a ‘whole world’ experience, the effects of covid-19 sit in national contexts. We detail the issues for the UK in re-starting and re-inventing medical education, noting that the principles, if not necessarily the detail, will be common across the world.