Introduction:

Medical education is vitally important for improving the performance of health professionals in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective:

To identify the fundamental elements related to medical education in its relationship with medical care of patients with COVID-19, as well as prevention and control strategies.

Development:

Aspects related to medical care of suspected and confirmed patients, as well as to the prevention and control of infection transmission in the community settings or in health centers, are described as fundamental areas for medical education. Furthermore, after controlling the pandemic, health educators are challenged to assess the required modification to health professional training programs in order to achieve high performance in new epidemiological settings. Therefore, a systematization was carried out of knowledge related to the challenges and the role of medical education in the fight against COVID-19.

Conclusions:

Educators have faced a challenge during the COVID-19 epidemic in educating health professionals to face the epidemic, which will be even greater in the future due to the need to achieve sustainability of education and revision of training programs to face the new epidemiological reality.