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. 2020 Jul 12;54(10):960–961. doi: 10.1111/medu.14254

Integrating a COVID‐19 volunteer response into a Year‐3 md curriculum

Morgan J Haines, Alec C M Yu, Geoffrey Ching, Mary Kestler
PMCID: PMC7280601  PMID: 32438453

1. WHAT PROBLEMS WERE ADDRESSED?

The University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Medicine suspended clinical rotations for medical students on 14 March 2020 as a result of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. At that time, 291 Year‐3 medical students were engaged in clerkships across British Columbia and urgently needed an alternative academic pathway to advance to Year 4 on schedule.

2. WHAT WAS TRIED?

To address the growing public health crisis, UBC medical students created a Medical Student Response Team (MSRT) (https://covid19medstudents.ca/). This student‐led, grassroots initiative coordinated safe opportunities to support physicians and public health agencies, as well as allowing students to gain valuable experience the COVID‐19 in pandemic response. The MSRT represented all four UBC campuses and involved over 700 student volunteers.

The MSRT partnered with the Flexible and Enhanced Learning (FLEX) programme to allow Year‐3 students to receive academic credit for COVID‐19 volunteer work and advance to Year 4. The FLEX programme is a course series in the UBC md undergraduate programme that provides students with supervisor‐guided, semi‐structured time in Years 1, 2 and 4 to pursue individual scholarly projects. The Year‐4 FLEX time was reallocated to Year 3 and a new FLEX project was created to enable students to claim curricular hours for approved MSRT‐related volunteer work in combination with an academic activity. This intervention promoted student safety, volunteerism and scholarship as well as furthering students’ development as physicians in the context of roles established by the Canadian Medical Education Directives for Specialists (CanMEDS), the framework for medical education in Canada. 1

A total of 160 Year‐3 students participated in MSRT volunteer work with the potential for FLEX project integration. One example of such work, a project designated ‘Rapid Literature Reviews,’ is carried out by a student taskforce serving the infection prevention and control groups of two major Vancouver health authorities. The students undertake regular updates of the rapidly evolving COVID‐19‐related infection control literature to inform hospital policies, as well as developing their capacity to identify, appraise and summarise key medical publications. In another project, entitled ‘Connecting with Compassion,’ students use videoconferencing to enable social connections for older adults isolated in long‐term care as a result of COVID‐19, and are working with geriatricians to study the impact of this service on patients and their families.

3. WHAT LESSONS WERE LEARNED?

Several key points should be considered in the implementation of similar systems in the future. First, in a COVID‐19 pandemic environment in which community and health care system needs are high, it is essential to develop criteria for appropriate student volunteer activities. Activities must be safe, adherent to public health recommendations, and commensurate with the students’ level of training. The UBC medical school COVID‐19 pandemic policy precluded students from entering health care facilities or providing direct patient care. Although this limited some activities, it allowed students to choose volunteer opportunities that developed skills that pertain to CanMEDS roles such as those of Communicator, Leader and Health Advocate. Second, a medical school curriculum that includes dedicated time for students to pursue individual scholarly projects provides a natural mechanism to transform volunteer work into academic credit. The existing UBC FLEX programme quickly filled the Year‐3 clerkship gap. Finally, the identification of a faculty member champion to serve as a liaison across students, community physicians, public health leadership and the FLEX programme was paramount to the success of this collaboration.

REFERENCE

  • 1. Frank JR, Snell L, Sherbino J, eds. CanMEDS 2015 Physician Competency Framework. Ottawa, ON: Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada; 2015. 1–29. [Google Scholar]

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