Dougan McGrath, a second-year student at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, helps deliver ... [+]
Fourth-year medical student at Boston University School of Medicine, Emily Erb, is one of many who will graduate from BU on April 17 rather than a month later as part of the school’s effort—along with other institutions in Massachusetts and New York—to get more workers on the coronavirus frontlines in local hospitals.
“We've been given paperwork to submit to the Massachusetts licensing board, which will allow us to get an expedited emergency license,” says Erb. In the meantime, she’s connecting volunteer health professionals and students with healthcare workers that have asked for help with daily tasks.
Sarah Aly, a fourth-year med student from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, is also graduating early, but she’s wary about going directly to the hospital’s frontlines. It’s a valid concern, especially considering residents—the typical next role for graduating med students—are dying at increasing rates from COVID-19 exposure. That said, Aly isn’t backing away from an opportunity to help out. “This absolutely needs more hands on deck,” she says. “But we do need to not jump in blindly, we need to do it safely and appropriately. We don't want to end our medical careers before they've even started.”
Medical students nationwide have been stepping up to lead coronavirus relief efforts. Sometimes that means going directly to the front. In other cases, that means doing work to support efforts behind the scenes, whether that’s through taking on communications tasks or working with communities to get needed equipment to doctors. Under these extreme circumstances, the soon-to-be doctors are making opportunities for themselves that they’ll be able to apply to their residencies and beyond. More importantly, as the pandemic remains prevalent, they’re making a sizable impact in their communities without having to be asked.
Students whose clinical rotations have been put on hold have been finding new ways to lend a hand inside hospitals. Ariana Matz, a third-year medical student at New York Medical College (NYMC), is using her newfound extra time to organize a volunteer rotational program comprising 20 students and 20 hospital employees. Many take on non-clinical efforts like helping frontline medical staff with childcare and errands including dog walking and grocery shopping. Others are helping patients navigate through the screening process at test centers and are monitoring the temperatures of employees and visitors as they enter the hospital.
Ariana Matz, a third-year student at New York Medical College, volunteering at an affiliate ... [+]
Some, like Matz, are taking on heavier tasks. She calls patients daily on behalf of NYMC’s affiliate hospitals (Westchester Medical Center, Good Samaritan Hospital and NYC Health + Hospitals/Metropolitan) delivering diagnoses and test results. She also trains other students on how to operate the electronic health systems at NYMC’s affiliate hospitals and how to deliver sensitive diagnosis news to patients over the phone. In the last two weeks, she says she’s spoken to more than 750 people.
“It can be really easy and it can be really difficult,” Matz says, of the calls. “It's a really raw intimate moment when they hear that they’re positive [for COVID-19], so it's how you present the information, I think, that is so important.”
With no obvious ways for her to directly aid coronavirus efforts, first-year Harvard Med student Pooja Chandrashekar drew on her experience as the child of two immigrants. “I've always been cognizant of the fact that a lot of health information isn’t available in South Asian languages,” she says. This memory became her inspiration to launch the COVID-19 Health Literacy Project, a student-run initiative that translates original COVID-19 fact sheets into 37 different languages.
She’s developed a network of more than 175 multilingual medical students across some 30 institutions. The students collaborate with Harvard Health Publishing to summarize updates from health outlets like the CDC, then synthesize the information into one-page presentations. The sheets are vetted by physicians and faculty members at Harvard Medical School before being made available to the public.
Johanna Dungca, a second-year student at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine, helps deliver ... [+]
Shortages in personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks, gloves and face shields have made headlines nationwide. In response, med student groups from across the country are creating regional websites to collect and distribute PPE to hospitals. Third year MD-PhD student at NYU Langone Samantha Lux was one of the first to start such a group. She and a group of New York medical students launched PPE 2 NYC in late March to collect supplies like masks, gowns and gloves from businesses such as local beauty salons and veterinary hospitals. Financial donations have also poured in from individual residents looking for ways to help.
“At this point, I think we're up to over 10,000 N95s donated, over 200,000 surgical masks donated, and some thousands of gloves and gowns and other PPE,” says Lux. “The reception has been phenomenal; I think we were totally unprepared for how much New Yorkers really wanted to help.”
The group has since expanded its donation efforts beyond NYU and Bellevue hospital to other hard-hit hospitals, such as Elmhurst and Montefiore in the Bronx, Lincoln and New York-Presbyterian in Queens and Woodhull in Jamaica. “We've donated to about 20 different hospitals, all throughout the five boroughs,” adds Lux.
“I have to commend groups like PPE 2 NYC and PPE 2 PHL,” says Jessica Baylor, a second-year medical student at Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. Baylor and her classmates launched a similar effort—PPE 2 NEPA—for the northeastern Pennsylvania area in early April. So far, the group has collected 23 boxes of 100-count gloves, more than 350 masks, 50 shields, 10 gowns and more than 120 N95s. “[These groups] had such a huge impact on those regions, and we’re just modeling our organization after them.”
Stephen Patrick, a fourth-year med student at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), is helping support Charleston’s Infection Prevention and Control notification system by asking local patients and healthcare workers who’ve been diagnosed with COVID-19 to take part in an over-the-phone questionnaire.
Most people have been receptive and willing to answer questions about their diagnosis and symptoms, Patrick says. “Usually the conversation lasts about 20 to upwards of 40 minutes, depending on if they have a lot of questions,” he adds. The hardest part of the process? Getting people to actually answer their phones.
South Carolina hasn’t instituted any early-graduation policies, so Patrick is still slated to graduate at the normal time in May. But Patrick’s not in any rush. His COVID-19 volunteer experience is preparing him well—for whenever his time comes to be on the frontlines.
“This experience brings things down to earth a little bit more, but it kind of excites me in the same way,” he says. “What we're doing is important, and taking care of people is what we got in this business to do anyway.”
