We read with interest the recent article in the journal addressing medical education issues amid the COVID-19 pandemic [1].　 We appreciate the authors for addressing the area of medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic. We would like to report our experience with undergraduate education at a newly established medical school, during the lockdown ensuing from this pandemic.

After the detection of the first COVID-19 case in Turkey on March 11, 2020, all universities were closed. Our institution had opened a year ago, and we have 48 undergraduate students. Our first year integrated curriculum was based on face-to-face interaction and laboratory sessions. Though, the past epidemics/ pandemics were one of the topics in the group discussions [2], yet we discovered that we ourselves were unprepared for providing medical education in this situation.

This disruption of education forced us to make a rapid transition to online teaching systems [3]. We discussed with the faculty members about adapting our program to distance education; and trained them for internet-based distance learning. After informing the students, we started providing our theoretical lectures online, as per a fixed schedule. Initially, the students’ participation in the lectures was low. We tried to reach the non-participants to learn about their problems, and made an effort to keep them in the training system, which lead to increasing participation by students.

Before conducting the phase-end summative examination, we provided mock tests for the students, so as to get their feed-back. In the end, we completed the program but had to postpone some laboratory sessions until the beginning of Phase 2.

We learned an important lesson that maintaining online programs successfully in medical education would need to be done through close communication with students. Moreover, despite the ever-present possibility of a pandemic arising at any time, medical schools were not ready for continuing their teaching. While face-to-face learning is the cornerstone of medical education, some distance-based educational activities might be incorporated as a routine in medical education, so as to ensure trained faculty and well-aware students.

Acknowledgement: Ass Prof Dr Ipek Gonullu for assisting in manuscript preparation.

1. Sahi PK, Mishra D, Singh T. Medical education amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Indian Pediatr. 2020 May 14;S097475591600181 [E-Pub Ahead of Print].

2. Aslan D, Sayek I. We need to rethink on the medical education for pandemic preparedness: Lessons learnt from COVID-19. Balkan Med J. 2020;37:178-79.

3. Torda AJ, Velan G, Perkovic V. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on medical education. Med J Aust. 2020. Available from: https://www.mja.com.au/journal/ 2020/impact-covid-19-pandemic-medicaleducation. Accessed June 01, 2020.