Observational Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Virol. May 25, 2022; 11(3): 150-169
Published online May 25, 2022. doi: 10.5501/wjv.v11.i3.150
Educational, psychosocial, and clinical impact of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic on medical students in the United States
Veronica Frank, Anjali Doshi, Natalie L Demirjian, Brandon K K Fields, Catherine Song, Xiaomeng Lei, Sravanthi Reddy, Bhushan Desai, Drayton C Harvey, Steven Cen, Ali Gholamrezanezhad
Veronica Frank, Semmelweis University Faculty of Medicine, Semmelweis University Faculty of Medicine, Budapest 1085, Hungary
Anjali Doshi, Brandon K K Fields, Catherine Song, Drayton C Harvey, Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States
Natalie L Demirjian, Department of Integrative Anatomical Sciences, Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States
Xiaomeng Lei, Sravanthi Reddy, Bhushan Desai, Steven Cen, Ali Gholamrezanezhad, Department of Radiology, Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States
Author contributions: Doshi A and Frank V drafted the survey for the present study; Doshi A managed the survey edits, coding the survey, and submission; Desai B obtained IRB approval; Demirjian NL, Fields BKK, and Song C assisted in survey question editing rephrasing; Desai B, Reddy S, and Gholamrezanezhad A reviewed study documents, survey modifications, and provided input; Doshi A, Frank V, Demirjian NL, Fields BKK, Harvey DC facilitated network outreach; Lei X and Cen S performed statistical analysis on the data; Doshi A and Frank V drafted the manuscript. Prior to submission all authors provided edits; Doshi A and Frank V equally contributed to the work.
Institutional review board statement: The Institutional Review Board of USC determined this study to be exempt from review (application number UP-20-00314).
Informed consent statement: The study was a survey, for which informed consent was waived by IRB, as no clinical or identifying information from the participants were recorded.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Ali Gholamrezanezhad, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Radiology, Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California, 1500 San Pablo Street, Los Angeles, CA 90033, United States. a.gholamrezanezhad@yahoo.com
Received: December 17, 2021
Peer-review started: December 17, 2021
First decision: February 21, 2022
Revised: March 10, 2022
Accepted: April 22, 2022
Article in press: April 22, 2022
Published online: May 25, 2022
Processing time: 153 Days and 10.1 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic resulted in a significant impact on medical student education. Education was switched to on-line, examinations were changed, and students’ faced dismissal from hospital wards. In this study we analyzed the unique stressors that resulted in higher anxiety levels in medical students. From the results, we can agree that the development of medical school curricula for public health and mass casualty planning as well as providing further mental health support for medical students is necessary and should be further studied.