I'm cross posting the following that I recently placed on another discussion thread. At Nebraska, we have removed students from clinical rotations and were planning on doing so before the AAMC guidance document. Our rationale is multi-fold but primary centers around the student desire to contribute and do good, which is what we want to engender. Proactively removing them from a sub-optimal learning environment (our clinical systems are appropriately focused elsewhere) and building curricular elements and infrastructure that will allow them to positively contribute to the efforts while significantly enhancing their
professional learning was the goal. There will always be time to come back and learn the clinical medicine down the road. Here is my prior post:
At the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, we had been proactively planning for removing students from the clinical environment for, as you mention, several months. As a transition, we are developing a new rotation for all clinical students that encompasses learning objectives critical to disaster preparedness and emerging infectious diseases (e.g., leadership, professionalism, ethics, population health, social determinants, etc.) while building in a heavy dose of service learning throughout our community and health system. Some of this service will be supporting the front lines while others may be away from the hospital/clinics. Reflection will be a key component of this rotation. Our overarching goal is to help students continue to learn while channeling their extensive skills and energy to support the greater good. We aim to have this rotation launched by the first week of April.
Kelly Caverzagie, MD
Associate Dean for Educational Strategy
University of Nebraska College of Medicine
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Kelly Caverzagie
Associate Dean for Educational Strategy
University of Nebraska College of Medicine
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-17-2020 11:15
From: Brigham Willis
Subject: Alternative Clinical Education Curriculum during COVID-19 Pandemic
We are currently holding the line so to speak as much as possible and keeping students on rotations. Being a distributed model, we have had some sites ask students to stay home for a period of time, but we are working with them to get students back on rotation ASAP. We are tracking missed time and plan on utilizing elective / selective weeks to remediate this. But in general our intent is to maintain students' education and try to minimize the disruption to their timeline.
Our biggest problem at sites has been a lack of PPE. So we have worked with sites to try to come up with student roles that allow them to observe situations that require PPE, and continue providing patient care in situations that do not.
We have secured new contracts with online content providers, and are developing more internally. I have been most impressed with iHuman, a Kaplan product. Very good interactive cases, and quite a few of them. Plus analytics on how students progress through the cases.
Thanks to everyone for the communication. Having networks like this are incredibly helpful in times like this. No one wants to navigate this stuff alone!
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Brigham Willis
Senior Associate Dean of Medical Education
University of California Riverside SOM
Original Message:
Sent: 03-14-2020 16:56
From: Kevin Moynahan
Subject: Alternative Clinical Education Curriculum during COVID-19 Pandemic
As schools consider the need to pull students from clinical rotations, there may be a significant need for on-line alternative experiences to augment, or in some cases replace clinical rotations. Rather than all schools developing alternative clinical experiences in isolation, do resources exist that can be leveraged by all schools?
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Kevin Moynahan
Deputy Dean, Education
University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson
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