All schools, in all levels, were closed due to the the pandemic. My school, the Cebu Institute of Medicine was also closed before the school year was over and the students continued their classes through online platforms. The faculty had to learn to conduct classes through these platforms.
Wanting to contribute to the needs for PPEs for frontliners, students volunteered with the Rotary Club of Metro Cebu to make PPEs in the Pilgrim Center of the Basilica Church and distribute them to frontliners. There were students who also involved in the distribution of relief goods to urban poor settlers displaced from their livelihoods.
Looking at the macrolevel of the impact of the pandemic on the education sector, particularly on the health professions sector, the picture is not good. We ponder on how unemployment of families, the economy gone bad, the gloomy prospects of recovery, the crisis of the pandemic, will affect the health education sector. The loss of income of families of students taking up or going to take up medicine, nursing, midwifery, physical therapy, occupational therapy and other allied health sciences, may bring about a drop in the enrollment in these courses. Moreover, how many of these families have laptops and internet connectivity? If they cannot enroll anymore, what will these students do out of school? And if they are lucky enough to graduate, what jobs will they have?
With more cases of COVID-19 overwhelming our hospitals, nurses resigning out of fear and deprived of hazard pay and due compensation, will we have nursing students at all? How about doctors? Already, due to the K-12 curriculum, medical schools will see a drop of enrollment.
There are many issues that we in the health professions education sector have to consider, aside from preparing our courses to be taught online. How do we bring our students to get involved in the issues now confronting our society due to the pandemic? We cannot simply teach them the books, or our past lessons again.
These are just some thoughts to ponder on.