Teaching through the COVID-19 pandemic: A challenge that pushed medical education outside of its box

COVID-19 was a major catalyst for a sea change in medical education. The pandemic pushed the teaching of anatomy, histology and embryology out of the classroom and labs, across states, countries, and continents. It demanded an immense effort and adaptability, especially from faculty. Teaching through the thick of the pandemic has been the challenge of a lifetime to instructors, doctors, educators. We are living through what may be the most difficult time in the history of global healthcare. The pandemic threw us off our paths and demanded more than training, more than skills. It demanded our passion and our courage. Our willingness to lean into our values and embrace our purpose: the success of our students. All the rules were changed as we navigated uncharted territories together. It was a call to courage and the Team of World Changers at Mount Sinai showed up, bravely, with all their passion, their curiosity to ask questions, try new modalities, and look for solutions out of their comfort zones. Mentors and experienced professors supported the system with humbleness and unparalleled openness, leaning into the vulnerable place of learning an entirely new set of skills in record time. The pandemic demanded resilience: that willingness to try again and again, with patience, flexibility and persistence. Structures is the first course of our medical school, encompassing Anatomy, Histology, and Embryology. It is traditionally a hands-on course which was moved to a 100% remote system in a matter of 3 months. We stripped ourselves from our identities and our voices, and went searching for something entirely new, yet authentic, still ours. Our bodies ached and our minds were drained at the end of working days of 12, 14, sometimes 24 hours, weekdays and weekends, as we strived to be the air under our student's wings. Zoom became our classroom, our lab, our meeting room, our offices, our everywhere;we acquired and repurposed resources, created new visualizations, developed new materials, expanded the team, reinvented ourselves, defied our boundaries as educators, and reached out farther than ever before. We accelerated the technological fluency of our teaching force and we dealt with questions of equality of learning, e.g. students in different time zones, disparity of internet speed, quality of hardware, not to mention the inherent isolation of the distance learning modality. And we succeeded. We got to teach and inspire our students. We got to learn and be inspired by them. We got to see them being curious and daring, discovering new ways to learn, and finding their own paths as they progressed in Structures, and in their career. We were rewarded with priceless joy and fulfillment. As we peak into the future, we see a world of possibilities and potential, coupling hands-on work and remote technology in the world of Anatomical Sciences and Medical Education. We know we can reach out our arms farther than ever before and spread knowledge at an even larger scale, prioritizing the quality of learning, and embracing our community anywhere in the world. At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, we believe that ?impossible? is a temporary concept, and we pride ourselves of having the most passionate and compassionate thinkers and doers in our teams. This was a turbulent year, but it made us stronger and today we hope and work for a 2021 of healing and progress.