key: cord-0897493-yqsxjiw6
authors: Edelman, David S.; Desai, Urmi A.; Soo‐Hoo, Sarah; Catallozzi, Marina
title: Responding to Hospital System and Student Curricular Needs: COVID‐19 Student Service Corps
date: 2020-05-16
journal: Med Educ
DOI: 10.1111/medu.14243
sha: 8b97cde12fe18a8541c1ac0821453ca3745c820d
doc_id: 897493
cord_uid: yqsxjiw6

Throughout March 2020, cases of COVID‐19 grew exponentially, and New York emerged as an epicenter of the crisis. Social distancing, shortages of personal protective equipment, and clinical care needs necessitated that students be removed from the clinical setting. A group of students, faculty members, and administrators formed to identify ways in which students could be involved in supporting the health system.

Throughout March 2020, cases of COVID-19 grew exponentially, and New York emerged as an epicenter of the crisis. Social distancing, shortages of personal protective equipment, and clinical care needs necessitated that students be removed from the clinical setting. A group of students, faculty members, and administrators formed to identify ways in which students could be involved in supporting the health system. Immediately identified areas of need included maintaining virtual medical education, supporting rapid adoption of telemedicine, assisting high volume hotlines, and providing wellbeing support to providers and students. The COVID-19 Student Service Corps (CSSC) was devised and deployed at Columbia University Irving Medical Center with the mission of supporting health systems and their patients, workforce, and communities facing the COVID-19 pandemic through interprofessional student service-learning projects.

CSSC leadership team developed guiding principles, including service-learning guidelines, and service project ideas that were found to be successful. Guiding principles included:

• Needs are identified by the healthcare system.

• Service-learning model, in which students learn, reflect, and grow in their professional and personal identities while serving their communities, is utilized. 1 • Leadership and collaboration are interprofessional when possible.

• Faculty and student collaboration; oversight and supervision help students serve the healthcare system and communities.

Project areas to consider given local healthcare setting needs:

• COVID-19 Hotline staffing of community-facing and internal staff lines.

• Telemedicine Video Assist to rapidly onboard patients onto institutional telehealth platforms.

• Telemedicine Remote Patient Monitoring of COVID-positive patients after discharge.

• COVID-19 Research support.

• Information Services to produce high-quality, digestible resources on COVID-19 for patients, families, faculty, and students.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved • Medical Education to provide high-quality ongoing curricular experiences for preclinical students.

• Mental Health and Well-being support for students, faculty, staff, and community members.

• Patient Population Outreach to communicate anticipatory guidance about COVID-19 and care seeking to high risk populations.

• PPE Task Force to organize procurement, donation, and manufacturing of personal protective equipment from the community.

To get started, steps can include forming an interdisciplinary oversight committee, developing a mission and partnerships, identifying and responding to health system needs, recruiting interprofessional faculty and student volunteers, developing systems for feedback, engaging in reflection and continuous quality improvement exercises, and giving students the option of academic credit for participation and engagement in service-learning.

Webinars were held for the leadership team to rapidly share ideas and project information with students. A toolkit was developed to aid replication at health professions schools nationally and across the globe. More than 1,300 students, faculty, and administrators were eager to contribute ideas and to volunteer, and projects were identified, staffed, and initiated within the matter of days. An oversight committee, faculty and student project leaders, and student coordinators for each project was essential.

Hospital regulations and inter-institutional technological differences created barriers to launching projects as quickly as they were conceived. Members have learned that patience, humility, and tenacity are important qualities to help work through barriers. Being nimble to move students across projects based on urgency and need has also been important.

Email, social media, and collaboration platforms were important resources for administration of the CSSC. Interested groups can reach out to CSSC National (cssc@cumc.columbia.edu) or @CSSCNational on Twitter for more information and coordination efforts.

Service-learning: Community-campus partnerships for health professions education