Social Accountability of Medical Schools Toward Their Students

Social accountability refers to the role of institutions, including medical schools, as contributors to an evolving society. The COVID-19 pandemic and global health crisis have exacerbated challenges and difficulties of medical schools to adopt the social accountability paradigm. This exploratory study aims to identify weaknesses and demands of medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic with the intention of developing interventional, socially accountable educational programs. An online questionnaire was sent to medical students in year one to three for collecting data about students’ perception of preparedness to cope with sudden changes from in-person to online teaching due to COVID-19 measures. In addition, data about students’ well-being was collected according to the Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure and the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. 221 of 376 students completed the questionnaire (58.7%). During the COVID-19 pandemic, most medical students kept up with new educational technologies and adjusted to online learning. However, most students suffered from poor time and learning management, poor quality of life and burnout. Data analysis on wellbeing variables showed: a) poor quality of life (52%); b) medium to high level of burnout (65.1%), with the highest number of students with burnout (70%) in third year; c) medium level (73.8%) to high level (23%) of resilience across all years. Our study indicates that medical schools need to be socially accountable towards their students and allocate additional resources into programs for the support of the cognitive and emotional needs of medical students, with the emphasis of improving students’ learning management and cognitive skills, and by doing so, reducing burnout and improving quality of life. Finally, social accountability should also include students’ wellbeing, in addition to activities related to patients, health system and society.