Complex Thinking in Medical Education: An Unavoidable Challenge in the Face of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the medical education must be transformed in order to help build an innovative clinical practice. On the way forward, is essential the development of the principles of complex thinking, which induce: look at the interactions of the elements underlying the emergency, practice interprofessional work, live authentic human relationships with the patient, investigate the multi-inter-dimensionality of phenomena, articulate the clinical care of the individual with the context of the health system. Therefore, medical schools have the inescapable challenge of training students capable of think and act from perspective of complexity, integrating such principles. Faced with the disruption that the pandemic causes in teaching activities in universities and hospitals, technology and didactic basis are decisive to build virtual classrooms, however, the paradigm of complexity must permeate academic tasks. It is fundamental to implement complex thinking experiences, so that students learn to approach systemically to health – disease problems, to navigate amidst the uncertainty, and to be co-creators of a reality, in which the qualities of individual, local and global health and well-being are manifested.