Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexican residency programs: Implications and Experiences for the Continuing Professional Development of Residents

Abstract Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has forever changed the way to evaluate and teach residents, fellows, and medical students by means of new demanding learning modalities and alternatives to leverage from this new lifestyle without affecting our training as medical specialists. As of January, 24 2021, the number of confirmed cases and deaths by COVID-19 both in Mexico and around the world have been continuously growing (1,752,347 and 149,084 vs. 99,596,451 and 2,135,068, respectively). Mexico registers the world’s highest number of deaths from coronavirus among health workers, with 1,320 deaths confirmed. Methods: Four residents of different specialties analyzed and described how the pandemic affected and benefited the ongoing residency program and exposed some recommendations for each specialty. Results/Discussion: In Mexico, residents from all specialties are rotating in the COVID-designated area working as general practitioners exclusively for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Our residency program has had to put a stop to routine activities such as academic sessions, specialty consultations, practices, and surgeries. Conclusion: Nothing will replace the insights of the training from real surgical practices, but new and forgotten resources can be used to help assess surgical proficiency.