Dear Colleagues,
Yesterday, we made the difficult decision of pausing our clinical activities for Y3 & 4. This also occurred at several other peer medical schools in NYC and neighboring areas. Our explanation is in the email below. We are in the process of addressing how best to utilize this period of 3 weeks for our students- virtual experiences, video OSCEs/midcycle or end of clerkship feedback, etc versus a sharp pause of all duties. We are also devising activities through which students can support our health systems- for example, staff phone triage lines, and, based on FDA emergency action, we are planning for our MSTP and MD students to run RT-PCR testing for SARS-COV2 in our virology lab.
Stay safe,
Josh Nosanchuk
Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dear Einstein Y3 and Y4 Students-
We hope you are well and we appreciate your efforts and incredible Einstein spirit as we all navigate the COVID-19 pandemic together for our patients and community.
We are in the midst of an unprecedented pandemic that we expect to get worse before it gets better. In discussing the situation with our internal and external experts, and conferring with our colleagues at many other medical schools, we have made the very difficult decision to suspend all clinical work for medical students in Y3 and Y4 clerkships, subinternships, required experiences, and electives effective at 6 PM today, Sunday, March 15, 2020.
This decision is being made to protect the public and our community of health care providers and patients, as well as safeguard your health to the best of our ability. We know that social distancing can have far reaching positive benefits in curbing the spread of this infection. We now believe that limiting the number of people entering and exiting the hospital and health care setting each day and preserving PPE will be more beneficial than continuing with clinical education initiatives at this time. For now, all Y3-4 activities will be suspended for 3 weeks, with a plan to resume on Monday, April 6, 2020. All students may elect to travel home during this time, but should be prepared to return to start work on Monday, April 6. We would encourage careful thought about the safety of traveling right now for yourselves and for potentially vulnerable loved ones at your desired destinations. We implore you to follow the strictest of social distancing measures during this suspension of operations as when you return you may become a critical part of the healthcare workforce if the worst case scenarios play out. Einstein housing will remain open at this time and critical Einstein offices will remain open to assist those students who stay as well as those who leave campus.
We will be meeting with all clinical directors tomorrow to discuss options for how to manage your clinical education given this pause. For now, we encourage you to continue to complete all non-clinical activities you were already engaged in, including: studying for shelf exams, USMLE Step 2 CK, or other educational activities relative to your planned future careers. We will plan to update you on plans by Wednesday, March 18 so please keep a close eye on your email inboxes.
For students who are planning to graduate this year, please be assured that we will exercise every option available to us to ensure an on time graduation! For those going through the match, please know that your Office of Student Affairs will be imminently available to support you through this exciting process; further details about Match Day will be forthcoming. For students in Y3, please be assured that we will explore every option to minimize this interruption on your remaining education.
We have heard from many Einstein students who would like to assist in this period of tumult and we cannot thank you enough for wanting to join in the solution to this pandemic. In the coming days and weeks, the medical center may have important non-clinical needs and, if so, we will be soliciting student volunteers. Your assistance will be of great value to our institution and the community. Your Einstein spirit is what will carry us through this to better days yet to come.
We know many of you will have questions about this policy change. We ask for your patience as we operationalize this. For urgent questions, we ask that you contact either the Office of Student Affairs or the Office of Medical Education. For less urgent questions that you think the answers may pertain to the group as a whole, please send those to your student representatives who can identify the most pressing of those items.
Finally, we want to remind you that saying you are practicing social distancing but not actually practicing social distancing jeopardizes your health and the health of your loved ones and the community. Please be examples to others of how to do this distinctly non-human task.
Thank you for your understanding and flexibility as we make difficult decisions we believe are in the best interests of our students, community and patients during this extremely fluid time.
Sincerely,
OSA/OME teams
------------------------------
Joshua Nosanchuk
Senior Associate Dean for Medical Education
ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2020 11:59
From: Valerie Weber
Subject: Third and fourth year clinical rotations
Dear Colleagues,
I am hearing about schools that have pulled their third and fourth year students off of their clinical rotations.
I am interested to hear from those schools who have done so, what the thinking was (protecting students versus wishes of clinical sites) and how you will deal with the disruptions to the students' education.
Thank you so much. I hope all of you are keeping well and taking some time to replenish this weekend.
------------------------------
Valerie Weber
Sr Vice Dean for Educational and Academic Affairs
Drexel University College of Medicine
------------------------------