ISRRT_COVID-19_book

modalities to gain the clinical skills necessary to complete the degree. When the pandemic
came, our university schools closed for on-campus classes, since strict community quarantine
in different localities and stringent compliance with health and safety protocols were
implemented.
The program heads were all worried about how to start doing the learning continuity plan for
the clinical education training program. In our context, other allied medical health professions
like nursing, medical technology, respiratory technology, and medicine were already given
guidelines from the higher education regulatory body to implement and enforce. On the
contrary, others like the BS Radiologic Technology program were still waiting for their
guidelines to be released. The challenge for us in autonomous HEIs is to come up with our set
of policies for limited face-to-face classes and clinical education considering the previously
released guidelines for flexible learning during the pandemic while benchmarking on the
policies from other allied health professions. Autonomous HEIs demonstrate exceptional
institutional quality and enhancement through internal quality assurance program. Thus, may
offer programs and may carefully craft their curriculum that is above the minimum
requirement and standards of the regulatory body.
We continued the partnership with our host training institution, the hospital facility for the
internship program with a different mode of teaching clinical knowledge and skills. This time,
the preceptors are on site while the learners are remote in their homes. The preceptors
prepared their asynchronous teaching-learning activity in the form of video presentations or
tutorials, which tackle relevant topics such as the hospital and radiology information system,
infection control protocols, radiation protection measures, radiographic image production
and evaluation, and imaging procedures from general radiography up to the different
radiologic science modalities. The synchronous session with the preceptors is held on a
certain day in a week where workloads in the hospital are manageable. This is the opportunity
for both students and the radiology staff to interact via web conferencing in discussing the
synthesis of the video tutorials and sharing additional information needed for the
achievement of the learning outcomes for the specific week. So far, this mode of online
internship receives good feedback from our students as they are excited about learning the
clinical knowledge shared with them by their preceptors.
104