Introduction: the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted on mortality and several adverse health outcomes. It has also affected education as schools and universities had to adapt to remote learning due to social isolation strategies. Objective: to analyze the pandemic’s impact on medical education including undergraduate and graduate students and lecturers, as follow: i) teaching methods adopted by education institutes during shutdown, ii) students and lecturers’ perceptions and iii) impacts on students’ mental health. Methods: this systematic review includes the following study designs: cross-sectional, surveys, case-control, cohort, and clinical trials. The literature search was performed in four databases: PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and SciELO . The risk of bias and the quality of the evidence were evaluated. Results: a total of 1,576 articles were identified through searching databases, and 40 articles were included. We found the use of several teaching methods such as virtual platforms and social media, pre-recorded videos, discussion forums and others. Student’s challenges related to interference during online study such as family distractions, lack of a study room, challenges with internet connectivity, difficulties in communication between students and lecturers, gaps encountered during clinical skills learning. Lecturers’ challenges were difficulty in grasping students’ progress and learning outcomes and the lack of experience in online teaching. Only five studies explored mental health issues of medical students and found the occurrence of depression, anxiety, and stress. However, their prevalence was not comparable due to the use of different diagnostic instruments. Conclusion: there has been a wide range of teaching methods implemented for distance learning of medical students globally. The perceptions of medical students about these methods and their impact were also varied. Infrastructure, family, and curriculum problems represented the greatest difficulties in adherence and satisfaction with distance learning. However, the flexibility of digital learning was one of the factors that helped reduce these problems. Regarding mental health, the occurrence of anxiety, depression, and stress was reported.

Back pain is common in adolescents as a result of their typical daily activities. There is a critical need for developing instruments that can assess the adolescents’ knowledge of proper posture, because adequate postural habits are essential for preventing back pain and facilitating physical well-being. Unfortunately, there is insufficient understanding about appropriate back health in the general public, even though this knowledge is decisive in the development of physical skills and attainment of health literacy. Furthermore, relevant substantive literature is scarce. Therefore, the proposed systematic review aims to identify instruments that are used for assessing knowledge of back health in adolescents. Relevant search terms and descriptors will be combined, and searches will be carried out in a uniform sequence within the PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane Library databases. Eligible articles must present data on the assessment of the adolescents’ knowledge of back health and describe the applied instrumentation. Articles will be selected by two reviewers independently; all disagreements will be resolved by a third reviewer. Mendeley and the Rayyan software will be used for the systematic review, and the checklist proposed by Brink and Louw will be used to verify the methodological quality of the included studies. Our findings may confirm the relevance of constructing and validating back health instruments for use in Brazil and other countries.

Introduction: appropriate habits related to the spine affect the performance of activities of daily living as well as the quality of life of the general population. Therefore, assessing spinal health knowledge, especially that of adolescents, is crucial to body awareness and health promotion. For this, instruments are used, mostly self-reported controls that measure pain, its causes and knowledge of it. The standardization of these instruments is essential, as it facilitates and consolidates their use and credibility. This scoping review analyzed the existing instruments for assessing the spinal health knowledge of adolescents from 14 to 17 years old. Research was performed using the PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and Cochrane Library databases. Articles were selected by two independent reviewers. Disagreements were resolved by a third senior reviewer. The methodological quality analysis was evaluated using the Brink and Louw checklist, and the risk of bias was determined using the Downs and Black checklist. Of the 6773 studies found, seven articles were included. These seven articles described the following three instruments that were used to assess spinal health knowledge: the Standardized Nordic Questionnaire (original and adapted versions); an instrument used to assess knowledge and attitudes of adolescents regarding low back pain and its occurrence (no specific name); and the Health Questionnaire on Back Care Knowledge Concerning Physical Activities in Daily Life for Adolescents. Six of the seven articles had high methodological quality, and all showed a low risk of bias. The present study identified three instruments (Norwegian, Spanish and Indian) that assess knowledge about spinal health in adolescents aged 14 to 17 years. Therefore, more instruments should be created and validated.