A Perspective on the Educational “SWOT” of the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted clinical practice, health-care organizations, and life. In the context that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste,” as disruptive as the pandemic has been to traditional practices—both clinically and educationally—opportunities have also presented. Clinical benefits have included the propulsion of clinical innovation, including such items as the development of novel vaccines and accelerated understanding of multiplex ventilation. Approaches to educating students and other learners have also changed radically, with the suspension of live teaching in most instances and a precipitous transition to virtual instruction. This perspective considers a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) associated with the coronavirus pandemic in health care that focuses on the implications for education. Although the obvious disadvantages (weaknesses) regard the loss of face-to-face interaction with all of its consequences (eg, isolation, risks to camaraderie, loss of hands-on training opportunities, and loss of in-person celebratory events like graduations and end-of-training celebrations), there are clearly offsetting strengths. These include growing experience with virtual teaching and virtual learning strategies, the invitation to codify best virtual teaching practices, a tightening of alignment between undergraduate and graduate medical education (eg, around virtual interview strategies), and opportunities for both self-reflection and a commitment to act virtuously. On balance, the pandemic has created the opportunity, indeed the necessity, to innovate in practice and in education, making the landscape ripe for creative practice, new mastery, and the concomitant benefits to learners and to educators.