Lessons from innovation in medical education during the COVID-19 pandemic: student perspectives on distributed training.

Introduction: Can the forced adaptation brought about by COVID-19 inform the future of clinical education? This study brings a low- and middle-income country perspective to this question. Most studies of the impact of COVID-19 on medical students' training have been conducted in high-income countries, where the infrastructure to convert to alternative virtual or COVID-19-friendly training platforms (online teaching or case discussions and skill development centres) is more established than in low- and middle-income countries. In South Africa, Stellenbosch University instead chose to move substantial components of clinical training away from the traditional city tertiary campus and into smaller district hospitals.