key: cord-0848375-ypt21a6e
authors: Rasmussen, Sten; Sperling, Phillip; Poulsen, Mathias Såby; Emmersen, Jeppe; Andersen, Stig
title: Medical students for health-care staff shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic
date: 2020-04-23
journal: Lancet
DOI: 10.1016/s0140-6736(20)30923-5
sha: 229edc824c28239809fbcce33830b5fc9fbdfc7b
doc_id: 848375
cord_uid: ypt21a6e

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We constructed a new portfolio to be completed by each student to demonstrate learning activities in courses, clinical placements, and pandemic work. This will be used to emphasise the commitment of medical students to the pandemic emergency health-care workforce and to support progression in medical education at this summer's examinations. Within 2 weeks, all master's students had volunteered, and almost two thirds of students (161 of 257 31% (142 students) were working in nine pandemic emergency departments.

The processes driving this initiative are illustrated in the figure, and the achievements were acknowledged by the Danish Ministers of Health and Education and the Danish Health Authority. Decisive support from the heads of both Aalborg University and Aalborg University Hospital facilitated the process, which was led by the heads of the medical master's programme in medicine (SR, JE, and SA) together with the heads of the medical students' organisations (PS and MSP).

This immediate response to the call for pandemic emergency health-care staff by medical students, without delay to their medical education, follows a historical trend 3 and sets an example, we believe, to be followed by other universities. The support by organisations and close collaboration was key to our success (figure). There is no need to hesitate-medical students are needed just as urgently as ventilators. 4,5

Nowcasting and forecasting the potential domestic and international spread of the 2019-nCoV outbreak originating in Wuhan, China: a modelling study

Situationen kommer til at stille kaempe krav til os alle sammen

Problem-based projects in medical education: extending PBL practices and broadening learning perspectives

We declare no competing interests. We thank Lukas Bjørn Leer Bysted (Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark) for preparing the graph.