Postgraduate medical education in the current context

In recent  years,  the system  of postgraduate education  in medicine faces  new challenges  and  the  need  for improvement. At the  same time, it is necessary to search  for a reasonable  combination of various types of education  in order to preserve  and improve the professional knowledge of doctors.Aim. To demonstrate and assess the importance of combining distance learning technologies with traditional teaching methods.Material and methods. The paper  analyzes the educational  process at  the  Department  of Therapy of the  I.M. Sechenov  First Moscow State  Medical University in the period from 2020 to July 2022.  The data are based  on the results of the annual report of the department, a survey of students, and communication with students  using electronic telecommunication  technologies  (forum, chat,  e-mail).  Data  were analyzed using SPSS Statistics 23.0 software.Results. Department  of Therapy of the I. M. Sechenov  First Moscow State  Medical University has been  training doctors  for a long time in advanced  training programs  using traditional and distance  learning. In 2020,  in connection  with the pandemic  of a coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), distance  learning technologies  have been  actively developed.  Online lectures  and  video seminars  have  become   an important component  of advanced  training programs,  in which 252 students  were trained in 2020, and 376 people from different cities of Russia during 2021 and the first half of 2022.In the first year of the pandemic, two short-term programs were created dedicated  to epidemiology, clinic, diagnosis and treatment  of patients with COVID-19. They were conducted  using online seminars, which made it possible to train 4156 doctors from more than 29 regions of Russia. Most of the listeners noted the high professional level of the programs, the importance of using computer technology in addition to traditional methods.Conclusion. In the modern  world, in order to maintain the required level of professional competence of a doctor, combination of traditional educational activities with distance learning should be used.