Nursing

Health education

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

Health care

Public health

Betacoronavirus

Public relations

Global health

Transformative learning

Virology

Pedagogy

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Outbreak

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Globalization

Interprofessional education

Political science

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Sociology

MEDLINE

Coronavirus Infections

Health professionals

Medicine

Medical education

Pandemic

Commission

Disease

Pathology

The Lancet

The education of health professionals substantially changed before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2010 Lancet Commission examined the 100-year history of health-professional education, beginning with the 1910 Flexner report. Since the publication of the Lancet Commission, several transformative developments have happened, including in competency-based education, interprofessional education, and the large-scale application of information technology to education. Although the COVID-19 pandemic did not initiate these developments, it increased their implementation, and they are likely to have a long-term effect on health-professional education. They converge with other societal changes, such as globalisation of health care and increasing concerns of health disparities across the world, that were exacerbated by the pandemic. In this Health Policy, we list institutional and instructional reforms to assess what has happened to health-professional education since the publication of the Lancet Commission and how the COVID-19 pandemic altered the education process.

Challenges and opportunities for educating health professionals after the COVID-19 pandemic