Impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on Colombian dermatology residents: results from a nationwide survey

Abstract

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Colombian dermatology residents: results from a nationwide survey Dear Editor, The decrease in demand for the dermatology specialty has been documented in several countries during the COVID-19 era. As of December 9, 2020, 1,384,610 confirmed cases have been reported in Colombia with 38,158 related-deaths and 10,731 recovered patients (source: https://www.ins.gov.co/Notic ias/paginas/coronavirus.aspx). As health care delivery has been transformed during the COVID-19 pandemic and given that adequate resident training has faced several challenges, in this nationwide survey we aimed to explore the impact of COVID-19 pandemic among Colombian dermatology residents. A 50-question web-based survey with no personal identifiers was sent to all Colombian dermatology residents on August 20, 2020. The survey was closed on September 2, 2020. One-hundred twenty-two dermatology residents responded to the survey (response rate: 92.4%). The demographic characteristics of responders are depicted in Table 1. Before the pandemic, 92% of Colombian residents reported to work 5 days a week, compared to 24% still working 5 days per week during the pandemic. The majority of residents (77%) used to attend between 50 and 150 patients per week before the pandemic, compared to 43% not attending any, and 38% attending less than 40 patients per week. In addition, the percentage of residents performing any surgical skin procedure decreased dramatically during the pandemic compared to before (85% vs. 0.8%). Telemedicine dermatology consultations increased from 5 to 84% during the pandemic. Also, when polled if virtual learning had a negative impact in their academic training, the answers were “No”: 44%, “Does not know”: 21%, and “Yes”: 34%. Also, the majority of residents (90%) reported to be partially or totally overloaded with the huge amount of non-peer reviewed information they received during the pandemic, and in 82% of the residents, at least one psychiatric illness was triggered among them (Table 2). Personal protective equipment (PPE) was provided by their university, health provider institution, labor risks insurance, by themselves, or by their hospital in 58, 17.3, 14, 9, and 1.7%, respectively. Few studies have reported the impact of COVID-19 on dermatology residency. In this study, we determined the magnitude of the impact of COVID-19 on Colombian dermatology residents. Our dermatology residents have been highly impacted by COVID-19 with the suspension of clinical activities which were replaced by telemedicine, and the very few face-to-face consultations were focused just on urgent or hospitalized patients. Similar to what has been published, such a situation has caused either uncertainty in some of them (21%) or negative feelings in others (34%). This study is highly disturbing in that 82% of our dermatology residents reported at least one mental disorder, behavioral