Hello!

I am José Olmedilla, I am from Madrid and next year I will start my fifth year of Medicine + International Program.

As a student of the School of Medicine at the University of Navarra, I have been asked to describe the day-to-day life of the students during this period of pandemic and confinement, from the suspension of on-site classes (how far away March 13 is now!) until May 18, the date of the last exam of the regular exam.

First of all, I would like to begin by thanking the School of Medicine as a whole, from the students to the Dean, Dr. Secundino Fernandez, but especially the members of the administrative office of the School of Medicine. administrative office and Dr. José Hermida, Associate Dean of Students, who from the very beginning thought of us, the students, so that we would not lose any class day and everything would go on as planned despite the difficult circumstances.

On March 12 we received an email informing us of the suspension of face-to-face classes and a day later we were notified that teaching would continue through the ZOOM platform. In addition, they confirmed that the class schedules would be maintained: if on Tuesdays at 4 pm there would be Gynecology, on Tuesdays at 4 pm there would continue to be Gynecology class , and so on with the rest of the subjects.

In these early stages of the confinement, the students requested that the classes be recorded and that the videos be uploaded to the ADI Virtualclassroom for later viewing in case we could not attend the class live, and this was done.

I would also like to highlight the admirable availability of the professors and their commitment to us. I say this because most of them are physicians and we cannot even imagine how much effort it has meant for them to have to combine clinical care with preparing and teaching the classes.

As the exams approached - which we medical students see as being close to the end of March - some of us were asked to collaborate in choosing the ideal platform to take the exams. I remember that on March 25 Dr. Hermida sent us an e-mail with this request, barely 10 days after the suspension of classes, and more than a month before the start of the exams. I would like to emphasize this fact, because it was the students themselves who expressed our needs and who chose the best method to be evaluated at the request of the School... We did not even have to ask for it. This is the subject of initiatives that make the School of Medicine of the University of Navarra the best in the world, and I say this with total conviction and certainty.

15 days before the first final examination , we already had a platform (Proctorio) that had all the guarantees to avoid fraud and did not suppose a degree program of obstacles for the students when taking their exams. In addition, we were all able to take a test beforehand to familiarize ourselves with the new system.

Thus, when the exams arrived, we knew exactly how to proceed; few problems were encountered and those that were, were solved quickly. We have all witnessed how, 15 minutes before each exam, there was a ZOOM session open with administrative office staff to solve any problem at the beginning and how, during the exam itself, there were up to four phone lines available to be able to quickly communicate any incident and solve it on the spot. These facts are a sample of the levels of submission, commitment and professionalism that we have at MedUNAV.

I will leave many things in the "digital inkwell" from which I write, such as individual cases that I cannot vouch for, or facts that I simply forget, but I believe that what I have stated faithfully sample what we have experienced.

I would like to conclude as I began, with my thanks to all the members of the School of Medicine, who have done an unbeatable work , with no room for uncertainty or chaos and counting on the students for everything.