Disaster training programmes help medical students prepare for pandemics
Citation: Ashcroft J, Byrne MH, Brennan PA et al. Preparing medical students for a pandemic: a systematic review of student disaster training programmes. Postgraduate Medical Journal. 2020 Jun 9.
What is this? The COVID-19 pandemic is placing a strain on healthcare workers. Existing information on how to train medical students for a pandemic and other disasters might provide useful information for policy makers.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for research into disaster training courses for medical students. They restricted their searches to articles published in English and did the search in March 2020. They included 23 studies from Germany (1 study), Israel (1), Italy (1), Saudi Arabia (1), South Korea (1) and USA (18 studies).
What was found: Disaster training programmes for medical students improve the preparedness, knowledge and skills they need during a pandemic.