Harnessing unique experiences to build competence: Medical student engagement in frontline care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Abstract

The year 2020 was dominated by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Besides the complexities of providing appropriate medical care to patients and protecting the global population against disease transmission, government policies aimed at combating the pandemic have had a profound impact on the activities of daily living [1]. As a result of international lockdown orders, a large number of frontline healthcare providers were redeployed to different hospital units, such as emergency departments, intensive care units (ICUs) and/or newly created triage test centres (TTCs) [2]. Although medical students represented a motivated group to fulfill evolving healthcare needs, medical student engagement was largely ignored in many countries, at least in the beginning of the pandemic. Indeed, most medical schools reacted by swiftly removing medical students from all in-person clinical and non-clinical activities [3]. Such withdrawal of students was reasonable as an initial response since it effectively addressed many concerns among educators and hospital administrators, which included increased risk of viral transmission, limited personal protective equipment (PPE), insufficient capacity to supervise students and concerns surrounding ethics and liability [4]. However, as the pandemic intensified and endured, medical schools began reintegrating students into clinical learning environments [3], albeit with a continued paucity of in-person clinical encounters. The global response to the reintegration of medical students into clinical learning was multifaceted, with each institution responding differently to suit their local demands (table 1). Most strategies focused primarily on virtual learning formats, wherein medical students received clinical teaching through physician-guided or preceptor-moderated sessions [6–8]. TTC administrators at the University Hospital Basel (USB), Switzerland decided early on to recruit medical students to become voluntary frontline workers on the aptly named “SWAB teams” [11]. Here, medical students assumed the responsibilities of supervised administrative work, history taking, evaluating clinical risk scores, measuring vital signs and performing clinical testing with nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs. To ensure patient and student safety, accurate instructions and supervision regarding the handling of PPE was given top priority. As the pandemic persisted, administrators at the USB subsequently incorporated medical students into mobile SWAB teams, who supported the staff of the inpatient wards. Colleagues at the Aalborg University, Denmark responded similarly to staff shortages and trained students in ventilator therapy and nursing assistance to support their ICU professionals [9].