Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp speaks during Thursdays ceremony in Columbus celebrating the groundbreaking for an expanded Mercer University School of Medicine campus.

COLUMBUS Mercer University today held a groundbreaking ceremony at the site of its planned medical school campus in Uptown Columbus on the banks of the Chattahoochee River.

The Universitys relocation and expansion of its Columbus campus, first announced in May 2019, will enable the School of Medicine to increase the campus enrollment to 240 Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) students over the next several years, eventually equaling the size of its campuses in Macon and Savannah.

Our colleges and universities throughout the state have been a key resource in fighting COVID-19 through the whole pandemic, said Georgia Gov. Brian P. Kemp, who spoke at the ceremony on Thursday along with Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan and House Speaker David Ralston.

This new medical campus is a great example of Mercers ongoing partnership in that fight and its commitment to caring for people not only in this area but all of Southwest Georgia and rural Georgia, in particular. At a time when all lives are looking to our health care system for guidance and support, I, for one, am very grateful for that.

The site at 1701 First Ave., offered to Mercer by Columbus community leaders in March, was owned by TSYS, a Global Payments company, just north of the companys existing Riverfront Campus. This location will allow for construction of a free-built structure to better suit the needs of medical school students, faculty and staff, and will also provide an iconic locale.

Today demonstrates the good that can come when local communities, institutions and government come together to solve a problem, said Mercer President William D. Underwood. It couldnt have happened without the can-do attitude that I see every time I visit this community the can-do attitude that Columbus is known for.

The School of Medicine is currently recruiting and hiring new faculty and scientists, and the inaugural class of first-year M.D. students in Columbus is scheduled to enroll in August 2021.

It is truly wonderful to see this worthy initiative become a reality, said Jean Sumner, M.D., dean of the School of Medicine. We are committed to our mission to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas in Georgia. This new campus will help to increase health care access in West Georgia and strengthen Columbus important role as a regional referral center. Working with a great community like Columbus, visionary state and local leadership, regional hospitals, local physicians and many public servants has been a privilege for Mercer University School of Medicine.

Brasfield & Gorrie will serve as general contractor on the planned 85,000-square-foot, two-story facility, which is expected to be completed in late 2021 or early 2022 and will include classroom and office spaces, as well as simulation, research and cadaver labs and a vivarium.

Our nation has never been more aware of the need to train and grow health care heroes, said Brasfield & Gorrie Vice President and Division Manager Wes Kelley. Brasfield & Gorrie is honored to contribute our expertise in education construction to benefit the doctors who will serve our communities, in Columbus and beyond.

The project is backed by generous support from the local community, which will be matched by the University, as well as operational funding from the state.

Mercers involvement in the Columbus community dates back more than 20 years when the School of Medicine began sending third-year students to do clinical rotations with local physicians and with then Columbus Regional Hospital.

In 2012, Mercer started offering clinical education to third- and fourth-year medical students in Columbus, establishing the Universitys third medical school campus in partnership with Midtown Medical Center (now Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital) and St. Francis Hospital and admitting a total of 12 students. Currently, the School enrolls 40 students in Columbus.

About Brasfield & Gorrie

Founded in 1964, Brasfield & Gorrie is one of the nations largest privately held construction firms, providing general contracting, design-build, and construction management services for a wide variety of markets. We are skilled in construction best practices, including virtual design and construction, integrated project delivery, and Lean construction, but we are best known for our preconstruction and self-perform expertise and exceptional client service. Brasfield & Gorrie has 12 offices and approximately 3,000 employees. Our 2019 revenues were $3.8 billion. Engineering News-Record ranks Brasfield & Gorrie 22nd among the nations Top 400 Contractors for 2020.

About Mercer University School of Medicine (Macon, Savannah and Columbus)

Mercer Universitys School of Medicine was established in 1982 to educate physicians and health professionals to meet the primary care and health care needs of rural and medically underserved areas of Georgia. Today, more than 60 percent of graduates currently practice in the state of Georgia, and of those, more than 80 percent are practicing in rural or medically underserved areas of Georgia. Mercer medical students benefit from a problem-based medical education program that provides early patient care experiences. Such an academic environment fosters the early development of clinical problem-solving and instills in each student an awareness of the place of the basic medical sciences in medical practice. The School opened a full four-year campus in Savannah in 2008 at Memorial University Medical Center. In 2012, the School began offering clinical education for third- and fourth-year medical students in Columbus. Following their second year, students participate in core clinical clerkships at the Schools primary teaching hospitals: Medical Center, Navicent Health in Macon; Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah; and Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus. The School also offers masters degrees in family therapy, preclinical sciences and biomedical sciences and a Ph.D. in rural health sciences.

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Mercer University Breaks Ground on New Medical School Campus in Columbus - Mercer News

Coronavirus data has flooded our world for six months. The public is scared. At the same time, physicians continue to work every day and many do not seem frightened at all. Physicians, including me, are most concerned about patients who avoid needed care and fear medical settings, which are actually safe. Physicians know something the public does not. How?

The publics fear of the COVID-19 pandemic reminded me of my early days in medical school. My classmates and I had been inundated with a mass of frightening medical information that we were not yet prepared to deal with. In my sophomore year of medical school, I remember thinking every headache was a brain tumor, every twinge of abdominal discomfort was liver cancer and when I was thirsty, it meant I had developed diabetes.

I was not alone. Everyone in my class seemed to think he or she was dying of something. This is what I refer to as sophomore medical student syndrome.

Fast-forward to today, when you cant turn on the TV without hearing about COVID-19.

From the time we first learned of this novel coronavirus earlier this year, weve been inundated with information and data. For example, you might have heard that the virus can be transmitted through, cytokine storms, in which the body starts fighting itself instead of the coronavirus. Or, you might have come across reports of some of the side effects characterized by a diminished sense of smell and taste. While there is research to back up COVID-19-related olfactory dysfunction, it is rare.

The deluge of developing information might have felt maybe still does overwhelming.

But could these effects really be harbingers of disaster?

Some have referred to this coronavirus as the plague; however, it is not. But with the entire country suffering from sophomore medical student syndrome, it seems to be. The true plague, also known as The Black Death, took place in the Middle Ages and it wiped out entire populations. Sometimes the plague would quickly kill half the people in a large city.

Thats not happening.

The virus has been with us for half a year. You may or may not know someone who has personally died from COVID-19, but more people are recovering from the virus than they are dying. I ask many people that question and almost all say they do not. I personally knew one a 75-year-old man.

Real risk exists, but the fear generated by publicity is much greater. Here in California you would have to know over 3,000 people to know one who died or COVID-19, but one in 150 Californians die of other things every year.

You probably knew several people who have died from something other than COVID-19. I certainly did and, sadly, several of them were my patients.

I am looking forward to everyone getting through this sophomore-like educational year and go onto their junior year much more prepared, just as my medical school colleagues and I did. Thats the year one begins to gain perspective, learns a little about how to treat things and rebuilds psychological defense mechanisms.

Heres to that rebuilding process, next year.

Dr. Thomas W. LaGrelius, M.D., F.A.A.F.P., is a board certified specialist in family medicine and geriatric medicine. He is the founder and president of Skypark Preferred Family Care, a concierge primary care/geriatrics practice based in Torrance, Calif. He is a staff member at Torrance Memorial Medical Center and Providence Little Company of Mary Torrance Hospital.

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COVID-19-induced 'sophomore medical student syndrome' | TheHill - The Hill

Karen Malacons life plan is to open a neurology research lab perhaps to investigate prenatal brain development, or maybe cognitive decline in aging patients.

My ultimate career goal is to run my own lab, and use its discoveries to help patients, she said. I feel its very important to interact with patients to inform the questions Ill be asking in the lab.

Malacon is one of 10 students who are starting StanfordsMedical Science Training Program, a seven- to eight-year curriculum that awards both a medical degree and a doctorate. But many of the 80 other students entering medical school this year are also intent on research: Twenty-two, far more than the more typical three to five, have committed to spending at least one extra year of medical school in a laboratory.

The school intentionally pursued research-oriented students, saidPJ Utz, MD, associate dean for medical student research, because the number of physicians with research expertise has been dropping nationwide.

That trend has many atStanford Medicineand other academic medical centers concerned, as physicians who conduct research form a crucial link between laboratory exploration and patient care. They are especially suited to direct research toward treatments while also bringing laboratory findings into the clinic.

Some students want to focus on patients, and thats fine, said Utz, a professor of immunology and rheumatology. But we are seeing the extinction of the physician-scientist unless we do something. If anyones going to lead this effort its got to be Stanford.

As a biomedical science hub with laboratories a short walk from Stanford Hospital, Lucile Packard Childrens Hospital Stanford and the medical school, the university is well-positioned to educate physician-scientists.

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New crop of medical students are headed to the lab - Stanford Medical Center Report

Medical school is a launching path to a career as a physician. No decision a medical student makes will affect where that career ends up more than picking a medical specialty.

There are some important questions and criteria surrounding that decision, and those questions are further complicated by medical training taking place during a pandemic. One of those key questions pertains to timing. One medical school faculty member and dean offered advice about when a student should pick a specialty.

The first and second year of medical school, typically the years during which students are doing their preclinical training, are a time to keep your mind open to possibilities, according to Lindia J. Willies-Jacobo, MD, associate dean for admissions and professor at Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine, which welcomed its first class of medical students this fall.

We find that students come into medical school thinking they want to pursue a particular career without having truly explored it, said Dr. Willies-Jacobo, who has been working with medical students for more than a decade. Its really amazing how many students will change their career path as a direct result of doing a much deeper dive into it.

As far as students who dont have a specialty in mind, the majority will come in truly not knowing. Some will come in thinking they know, then there is that five or 10% percent that know they want to be the thing, a pediatrician, a neurosurgeon, and they stay the course.

After months off the wards due tosafety precautions put in place to curb potential exposure during the COVID-19 pandemic, many medical students are returning to patient-facing roles.That means most medical students are resuming or beginning clinical clerkships.

Lasting between four and eight weeks, at most schools, the core clinical clerkships consist of internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, family medicine, psychiatry, neurology and radiology. Those rotations take place in the third year of training at most schools.

They have an opportunity to engage in clinical settings those first two years, but a deeper level of engagement happens during the third year of medical school, said Dr. Willies-Jacobo.

Your clinical clerkship may serve to reinforce your specialty choice, if you happened to be leaning one way, or expose you to something new. One potential pitfall to picking a specialty during your third year is the amount of free time students have.

Core rotations tend to be a busy and stressful time for students, Dr. Willies-Jacobo added. They are being evaluated frequently.

Learn thesix factors that dictate the resumption of clinical training.

With residency applications for most students going out in the fall of year four, most students pick a specialty at the end of their third year of medical school.

For students who are still deciding, subinternships rotations that typically take place at a hospital affiliated with your training institution during your fourth year of medical schooloffer one last chance to get specialty exposure before sending out applications.

Subinternships allow students to work in a more autonomous way, Dr. Willies-Jacobo said. Most subinterns will work similarly to the way an intern would work. They are fairly independent in their engagement with the stations. In that autonomy and being in that role in a pretty intense way is a way in which students can use that fourth year to settle on a specialty.

Learn how residency programs will view applications in 2021.

Some students who are truly undecided will apply to more than one specialty, Dr. Willies-Jacobo advises against that. Instead, she is seeing more students take an extra yearoften to pursue an additional advanced degreewhile they pick their physician career path.

I often will sit in my office with my student and have them put on paper the reasons they are attracted to one specialty versus the other, she said. There are times students decide for themselves they will take an additional year to figure it out.

I dont think theres one approach that every student should utilize. Doing that legwork and putting it on paper can help. Sometimes exploring a field a bit more can be the secret sauce to making a decision, Dr. Willies-Jacobo said.

Avani Patel, MD, is a first-year psychiatry resident at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi. Torn between two specialties during her fourth year of medical school, she decided to withdraw from the Match, delay graduation, and take an interim year to pursue a Masters in Healthcare Administration degree before beginning residency.

I wanted to go through the Match and graduation because thats what everyone in my class was doing, Patel said. But I needed to take this time and learning opportunity for myself to make sure of what I really wanted.

Once the pressure was off, Patel elected to pursue psychiatry as a specialty.

One thing Ive learned is that having this time of being away from patients and clinical care, it made me realize I do want to be a physician more than anything, said Patel, who graduated this past spring and began residency in July. Although this past year has been very fulfilling, none of it matters without the patient care. Im excited about residency, and I know Im in the right mind-set.

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When's the right time to choose a medical specialty? - American Medical Association

Researchers say so far SARS-CoV-2 has not been found in any of the samples, but the research could be used as a tool to monitor community infection among beachgoers.

DULUTH, Minn. Dr. Richard Melvin has made many visits to the beach this summer, but not for the reason most do.

"So, Ill collect 100 millilitres from every beach," he said, while standing knee-deep in Lake Superior and holding a tube filled with lake water.

The assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Minnesota Medical Schools Duluth campus has been taking water samples from eight beaches along Lake Superior every weekend since the Fourth of July.

"Usually during the warm time of the day ... when people are out trying to enjoy themselves on the beach," he said.

He and a team back at the lab then test the water samples SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.

Melvin says the virus in a person with COVID-19 is shed in their waste for up to a month after they are no longer showing symptoms.

"Its known that beaches can be contaminated by fecal matter due to human activity," said Melvin. "Its also possible that the virus, if people are shedding, that could wind up in the water at the beach [too]."

It's not a pleasant picture, but one worthwhile to study. Melvin said he and associates at Minnesota Sea Grant, which gave him a $10,000 grant for the research, don't know of this type of study being done anywhere else.

Melvin said so far SARS-CoV-2 has not been found in any of the samples, but their research could be used as a tool to monitor community infection among beachgoers.

"It also tells us how the disease spreads. It tells us how we can best fight the disease," he said. "With the information we gather this time, well be able to make a better response in the future to a pandemic. Well know where to look for the virus. Well know what is a risky activity."

Melvin says they will continue taking samples through the end of September. He says while they have not found the virus in the beach water yet, even if they did, they don't think the viral particles would still be infectious.

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U of M Medical School researchers look to beach water for COVID community infection - KARE11.com

A Gujarat medical college will conduct a post-mortem on those who died ofCOVID-19in an attempt to study theinfection's toll on the human body which leads to the patient's demise.

Pandit Dindayal Upadhyay Medical College in Rajkot has been selected to carry out this research. As per reports, the pathological autopsies on bodies of Coronavirusvictims have already been done at All India Institute of Medical Science (AIIMS), Bhopal.

An official release from the Gujarat government said the forensic medicine department of the college has initiated a research project to study the physiological and biological changes theCOVID-19 infection causes in a human body. For this, a research team, led by Professor Hetal Kyada, the head of the forensic medicine department and additional superintendent of dedicated COVID-19 hospital set up on the campus, will perform autopsies on some who died.

The objective of any post-mortem is to know the cause of death. So, the study will focus on the mechanisms that this viral infection triggers and causes death. It can be the clotting of the blood, inflammation, or any other condition. If we come to know the causes of death, then we can find out ways to prevent it, Professor Gaurav Dhruv, dean of PDU medical college, said.

According to reports, Rajkot Medical College will be the first in the state to perform such autopsies on COVID-19 victims. However, this will require the consent of the family of the deceased patients andthat the identities of such patients will not be revealed.

READ |Gujarat: 8-feet-long Crocodile Rescued From Residential Area In Vadodara

READ |Coronavirus Tests Could Be Picking Up Dead Virus, Study Shows Major Reason For Rising Case

Gujarat on Sunday reported the highest single-day spike of 1,335 new COVID-19 cases, taking the total count of infections in the state to 1,04,341, the health department said. The cumulative death toll went up to 3,108 with 14 people succumbing to the infection, including five in Surat, it said. A total of 1,212 patients were discharged in the day, taking the number of recoveries to 84,758, the department said in a release.

With this, the state's recovery rate now stands at 81%. A total of 72,561 samples were tested in the last 24 hours, which comes at the rate of 1,116.32 tests per day per million population.

(AP photo for representation)

READ |Gujarat's COVID-19 Cases Cross 1.04 Lakh; 14 Die

READ |Gujarat: Migrant Workers' Employers Asked To Follow COVID-19 Norms

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Gujarat medical school to carry out autopsies of COVID-19 victims to study effects on body - Republic World - Republic World

The ongoing pandemic is putting a spotlight on mental health as depression and anxiety continues to affect millions of Americans. But even before COVID-19, concern about the well-being of medical students was on the rise. About one in three medical students report symptoms of depression, and one in nine experiences suicidal ideation.

The University of New Mexico School of Medicine (UNM) recognized the need for some sort of intervention and developed a multilevel approach to help destigmatize mental illness among health care workers and raise awareness about support opportunities. UNM wanted to make it normal for medical students to talk about mental health and make it culturally acceptable to ask for help.

To make that happen, UNM had to start the conversation early. Before the schools formal white coat ceremony, the assistant dean for professional well-being would spend almost an hour talking about mental health with the family members of UNMs incoming students.

During that conversation, family members would receive a booklet about supporting their loved one during medical school. The booklet shares important things to know about medical schoolranging from the expected time commitment to the fact that it will likely be an emotional roller coasteras well as tips for communicating with medical students and suggestions for spouses, partners, or significant others. There is a page on random acts of kindness and support, and two pages breaking down the alphabet soup that is the language of medical training and medicine.

There also is a page titled When Students Should Seek Help. Included in the list of 14 scenarios are more obvious signs such as using alcohol or illicit drugs to self-medicate or having thoughts of self-harm, but also included are subtler signs such as when:

The success of UNMs work is spotlighted in an AMA STEPS Forward module, Normalizing Mental Health Care During Medical Student Training.

During orientation, medical students hear from upper-level students who have accessed the schools health and wellness resources about why they felt they needed help, whether they found the experience helpful and whether they faced any repercussions for seeking assistance.

First-year students have taken part in an annual wellness retreat that features a panel of three or four physicians who are in recovery from addiction. These panelists have been primary care physicians, cardiologists, residents, psychiatrists, anesthesiologists and infectious disease specialists, demonstrating that addiction can strike anyone. The first-year students hear firsthand about the signs and symptoms of substance-use disorder, as well as the recovery process.

In addition, the wellness dean would meet with small groups of students to discuss the adjustment to medical school and remind them of the resources available to all students.

Students also have had the opportunity to meet with the CEO and chief medical officer of the New Mexico Medical Board, as well as with program directors and the associate dean for graduate medical education to discuss concerns over reporting mental health history as well as ongoing issues they face related to mental health. These conversations led the director of graduate medical education to craft a list of frequently asked questions about mental illness and whether there are any subsequent repercussions handed down.

Overall, feedback for the schools wellness work has been positive, and in the past five years, the program has grown from three part-time positions to six part-time rolesfour faculty, one psychiatrist and one psychologistas well as a full-time program coordinator.

TheAMAs STEPS Forward open-access modules offerinnovative strategies that allow physicians and their staff to thrive in the new health care environment. STEPS Forward is part of theAMA Ed Hub,an online platform that brings together allthe high-quality CME, maintenance of certification,and educational contentyou needin one placewith activities relevant to you, automated credit tracking and reporting forsome states and specialty boards.

Learn more aboutAMA CME accreditation.

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How to help medical students keep tabs on their mental health - American Medical Association

By N.C. Education Lottery

Raleigh, N.C. On Saturday night, Kaila Moore of Durham had a dream that shed bought a scratch-off ticket. Acting on that dream led her to buy her first lottery ticket and a $100,000 win.

Ive never bought a lottery ticket ever in my entire life, said Moore. I literally had a dream that I bought a scratch-off. So, when I woke up I went and bought one.

She went to the Food Lion on West Main Street in Durham Sunday morning, paid $20 for the $4,000,000 Gold Rush game, then took her ticket home to scratch it.

Her reaction to realizing shed won? Excitement.

I was with my mom, said the East Carolina University student. She was more excited about it than me!

They both knew this money was going to go toward Moores education.

I plan to go to medical school and medical school is not cheap! she said. Im going to invest some of it in a mutual fund and the rest Im just going to save.

Moore claimed her prize Wednesday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. After required federal and state tax withholdings she took home $70,756 but said she wouldnt celebrate until after her physics class and studying.

The $4,000,000 Gold Rush game launched in August with three top prizes of $4,000,000 and six $100,000. Two $4,000,000 and three $100,000 prizes remain.

Ticket sales from scratch-off games make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $725 million per year for education. For details on how $13.1 million raised by the lottery made a difference in Durham County in 2019, visit http://www.nclottery.com and click on the Impact section.

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Durham student with dreams of med school wins $100,000 in lottery game - WRAL.com

Were experiencing challenges in 2020 that continue to disrupt our lives, our businesses and how we think about our institutions, practices and beliefs, from the devastating impacts of COVID-19 to engaging conversations about racial equity across our nation.

In healthcare, the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the inefficiencies, healthcare workforce shortages and access issues that have long taxed our system. Even before COVID-19 pushed our hospitals to their limits, the World Health Organization estimated we were facing a global shortage of 7.2 million healthcare workers.

Yet, many nurses, doctors and other medical specialists have been furloughed or lost their jobs in recent months. Its a paradox that speaks to the healthcare industrys need to innovate how it educates and prepares people to enter its workforce.

The current system simply isnt set up to address the areas of greatest need or provide the access required to create more diversity across the healthcare industry.

RELATED:Mount Sinai launches diversity innovation hub to tackle racism and gender inequity in healthcare

A report issued in June by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) paints a dire picture of the state of diversity in medicine. According to AAMC, only 5% of active physicians identify as Black or African American and just 5.8% identify as Hispanic. We must do more to open opportunities for diverse talent in medical professions.

The fact is traditional medical education has long relied on measures that are inherently weighted against diverse candidates to gauge future admissions success. An over-reliance on test scores and grades puts many students who have had to work through college, care for family members or take other nontraditional paths to medical school at an extreme disadvantage. These requirements disproportionately affect Black, Hispanic and other Americans from diverse backgrounds and become barriers to entry.

As COVID-19 puts logistical pressure on medical school admissions testing, some schools are extending deadlines and accepting partial applications until students can complete these tests. At the same time, the University of California recently announced its ending SAT and ACT requirements to help ensure a more equitable admissions process.

Many other schools are making the standardized tests optional for admission into undergraduate programs. Pre-COVID-19 research published by the National Association for College Admissions Counselinghas shown that such test-optional policies can increase both the number of undergraduate applications and the number of underrepresented minority students in freshman classes.

This same level of flexibility has not been applied to medical schools, many of which still require prospective students take the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, despite numerous cancellations and rescheduling in the wake of the global pandemic.

As a medical educator and physician, I challenge all medical schools to embrace this moment as an opportunity to reevaluate our dependence on the MCAT as a defining value indicator in the admissions process.

Since 1928, medical schools have relied on the MCAT to gauge an applicants potential. Today, applying for medical school, which includes test fees and charges for preparation courses, can cost up to $10,000. And theres no guarantee the investment will lead to school acceptance.

This risk automatically prices out many prospective candidates at a time when healthcare faces a projected shortage of up to 139,000 physicians by 2033 in the U.S. Paired with the medical school applications costs, school fees, tuition and living expenses, the traditional medical system has created a career path that limits the type of students it admits and attracts and, ultimately, the type of doctors it produces.

Theres so much more to a student than their MCAT score. I see this every day in my work.

Many students who may not have performed well on the MCAT have the drive and academic strengths to succeed in medical school.

RELATED:Medical school diversity concerns raised following Trump administration reversal on race consideration

With the right support and mentoring, I have seen these students thrive and know they can achieve their dream to become physicians.

Assessment tools like the MCAT may have made sense in the past, but putting too much emphasis on them is limiting opportunity for too many deserving students today.

The time is right for the medical industry to rethink how it evaluates, educates and advances the healthcare professionals of tomorrow. As the impacts of COVID-19 give rise to new technologies in the classroom, and MCAT exams, clinicals and internships are placed on hold, we have an unprecedented opportunity to transform our antiquated approach to medical education that, for far too long, has denied access to many promising students.

Now is the time for meaningful change.

David Lenihan, Ph.D., is president of Ponce Health Sciences University and co-founder and CEO of Tiber Health, an education technology company offering health-science curricula.

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Industry VoicesCould less emphasis on the MCAT bring more diversity to medicine? - FierceHealthcare

SOUTH KOREA

The plan to expand medical education has led to strikes by medical students and doctors at a time when South Korea is seeing a resurgence of coronavirus cases.

The clinical section of the licensing exam originally scheduled for 1-18 September has been postponed by a week, Korean Vice Health Minister Kim Kang-lip told media on 31 August.

According to the Korean Medical Student Association, just over 93% or 2,832 out of 3,172 final-year students at six-year medical colleges and four-year medical graduate schools who registered for the 2021 medical licensing exams normally held in September and October had cancelled their applications as part of the boycott.

Medical students also refused to attend clinical training and said they would boycott classes as well amid fears that this could impact training for several years. Some 84% of trainee doctors have taken part in strikes that began on 21 August, according to government figures released on 31 August.

Medical students began an indefinite strike after phased walkouts from 21 August over government plans announced in July to increase the number of medical school admissions by 4,000 between 2022 and 2031, a rise of around 400 students a year, in particular to improve rural health care. Current medical places have been restricted to some 3,058 a year since 2006.

The government also announced a new school of public medicine with an intake of 50 students a year, the introduction of telemedicine and proposals to allow medical insurance to cover more traditional medicines.

The Korea Association of Medical Colleges on Monday urged the government to delay the clinical exams for at least two weeks, or until the COVID-19 situation stabilises. The written portion of the exam will normally be held in January 2021.

Some trainee doctors agreed to volunteer their services for COVID-19 treatment during the strikes.

The country has seen three-digit daily increases in COVID-19 cases for the past 20 consecutive days with a total of 20,000 cases in its second wave, which started last month. South Korea had been widely praised for successfully containing the number of cases during its first wave earlier this year as cases subsided in April and early May. Schools had been reopened in May.

On 25 August the authorities ordered the closure again of all schools in the Seoul area, with remote learning continuing until 11 September, the education ministry said. Universities have extended their online classes.

More students for rural areas

The government said that under its plan, which it said would enable it to cope with future epidemics, around 300 of the extra 400 medical trainees a year would be for rural provinces, with tuition fee waivers and scholarships on condition they stay for 10 years.

Another 100 students of the increased intake would be required to specialise in fields such as epidemiology, trauma and biomedical research areas that are currently less popular among medical students due to heavy workloads.

The main reason for promoting this policy is to secure doctors where they are needed, Health Minister Park Neung-hoo said.

Currently only around 10% of registered doctors work in public health due to poor conditions, while doctors are concentrated around Seoul and other cities, increasing competition for hospital jobs.

Students said rather than increasing the numbers, the government should use the money to improve the dire conditions and pay of existing medical students and junior doctors and divert some of the funds intended for training additional students to cash-strapped rural hospitals. They argued the problem is not a shortage of doctors in rural areas but rather a need to tackle underlying issues behind poor healthcare in the regions.

Currently, some students have already been admitted to medical schools with lower grades as regional doctor candidates who must work in a provincial area for 10 years including the training period. Critics say this has led to a two-tier system, while regional doctors complain of working with poorer facilities and conditions in rural areas compared to their city counterparts.

Kim Ki-deok, vice-president of the Korean Medical School Students Association, who is among those boycotting the licensing exam, said the boycott was equivalent to a one-year strike by trainee doctors.

Kim noted the governments plan to open a new public medical school came in less than three years after it forced the closure of Seonam University medical school, which Kim said faced difficulties in hiring professors and establishing a training hospital.

Some 49 Seonam University students were scattered to neighbouring medical schools to attend classes, he said.

Seonam University was also dogged by quality issues and poor management and financial issues, according to government audits.

The proposal to set up a medical school specialising in public medicine is not new. A previous government plan set out in 2016 to build a national university of public health an area that is not lucrative for private hospitals was strongly opposed by the medical community and had to be abandoned.

Pressure as doctors threaten to join strikes

The government has been under significant pressure as the Korean Medical Association (KMA), representing some 130,000 doctors, held a three-day walkout at the end of August protesting at the governments proposals, and have warned of an indefinite strike from 7 September. Doctors have been covering for striking medical students interning in hospitals.

Hospitals have complained about the strain on emergency and intensive care units and concerns as the number of COVID-19 cases were rising.

Professors at university hospitals are also warning of collective action to support striking trainee doctors. At the prestigious Seoul National University (SNU), professors joined striking SNU medical students this week. Around 83% of SNU medical students were on strike on Monday.

Bolstered by surveys that indicated that 58% of the public do not support the medical strikes, Health Minister Park Neung-hoo issued an unprecedented order this week to force all residents (postgraduate medical students) and fellows (graduate specialist medicine trainees) working in Seoul and the neighbouring areas of Gyeonggi and Incheon to return to work immediately.

We tried our best to negotiate to prevent a collective strike by the doctors associations amid the serious possibility of a mass contagion of COVID-19, but the KMA and the Korean Intern Resident Association rejected the governments compromise and went through with the strike, Park said at an emergency press briefing on Wednesday.

Now the government has no choice but to issue a commencement-of-business order and other necessary legal measures for the sake of protecting the peoples lives and safety.

Park warned that violations of the order could be punished with a jail sentence of up to three years, or a fine of up to KRW30 million (US$25,200) and medical licence revocation. The threat has angered doctors who appeared more willing to join the strikes in support of students.

Despite its outward hardline stance, the government appeared to be softening. The government already unconditionally halted forwarding policies on expanding the medical school admissions quota to the education ministry until after the COVID-19 crisis, a senior health ministry official, Yoon Tae-ho, said in a 1 September media briefing.

KMA President Choi Dae-zip said: The government is threatening to accuse us and press charges against us, pushing the medical community into a corner, and added: In this situation, doctors cant have a dialogue with the government.

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Medical exams postponed amid strike and resurgent virus - University World News

The Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine is taking the next step to create a welcoming environment for all of its students with the creation of the Office of Medical Student Success. The office will be led by Dr. Rynn Ziller, who has been appointed Assistant Dean for Medical Student Success, the college said in a news release.

Melva Landrum, who had been the Assistant Director of Advising and Career Development, will assume the role of Director of Medical Student Success within this office.

I am excited about the opportunity to have a more comprehensive impact on our students success and well-being while they are in medical school, Ziller said. Our goal is to provide the support needed to ensure each student reaches his or her full potential, both personally and professionally.The Office for Medical Student Success was created to provide TCOM students a welcoming environment, timely and accurate advising, and programming designed to enhance their professional development. It will oversee an expansion of its career advising services for current students as well as past graduates.

We are so excited to expand the services for our medical students, Landrum said. As the needs of medical students grow for them to find success in both undergraduate and graduate medical education, the services that our department offers have become more extensive in the areas of advising and career development and through programmatic efforts.The Office for Medical Student Success also will lead TCOMs plans and commitment to increase Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion initiatives, provide strategies to promote medical student well-being and organize those major school events that celebrate the milestones of their medical school careers.The creation of this new office will create additional value within TCOM and provide resources needed by TCOMs medical students to achieve success.

A medical schools success can only be measure through the success, experiences and supportive environment of our students who have entrusted us in guiding them to their ultimate goal, TCOM Dean Dr. Frank Filipetto said. I look forward to the leadership Dr. Ziller will bring in her new role and the team she will lead in support of our students. FWBP Staff

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TCOM creates office of student success - fortworthbusiness.com

Janie Desmond who has visual impairment and mild intellectual disability comes to the edge of her porch for a portrait in Durham, N.C. Desmond is one of many adults with disabilities who rely on support staff in their home to remain independent, but are worried that close interaction could increase the risk of contracting COVID-19. (Casey Toth/The News & Observer/TNS)

The life-altering effects of COVID-19 have been tougher on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities than just about anyone else and they need more support, a group of experts is warning.

A letter published recently in the American Journal of Psychiatry on behalf of the directors of the nations 13 intellectual and developmental disabilities research centers which are funded by the National Institutes of Health is sounding the alarm about the devastating impact the pandemic has had on an already vulnerable population.

Many people with developmental disabilities have lost access to caregivers and service providers and these supports may not return given the financial toll of the pandemic on agencies and state budgets, the experts say.

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Those with developmental disabilities are also struggling with limited access to schooling and therapies, may be unable to use technology to connect with others and may not understand what they need to do to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

Among noninfected persons in the United States, few are more adversely affected by COVID-19 than individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities, given that a vast proportion require in-person care or critical therapeutic support within their living environments, with little backup or systematic coverage for prolonged interruption of services, writes John N. Constantino, co-director of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Association of University Centers on Disabilities.

Social distancing has been especially hard on a population that was already disproportionately isolated, they say. And, for a group that often needs more hands-on services at school, the switch to virtual learning is creating more inequity.

It is an inordinate burden to attempt to recapitulate the conditions of an appropriate education at home for most families and to avoid secondary consequences of individuals with disabilities falling further behind in academic achievement or training and suffering behavioral decompensation in the absence of the structure of a school or work day, reads the letter.

The pandemic has also highlighted gaps in health care for people with developmental disabilities who cant always verbalize their needs, making telehealth challenging. There have been issues with access to coronavirus testing for this population as well as ethical concerns about access to treatment for those who contract COVID-19.

With guidance emerging about how to safely care for and support people with developmental disabilities during the pandemic, the specialists said in their letter that a first priority should be restoring in-person support services to those who are unable to benefit from virtual substitutes.

Likewise, the letter recommends that in-home personnel be available to help families shoulder the burden of their childrens special education services.

Although there is public awareness of some of the challenges imposed by the pandemic on individuals with disabilities, the totality of the impact on a family or a person with such disabilities can go unrecognized, even by professionals, Constantino said.

We feel, as a group, that enumerating the multitude of consequences of the pandemic on this population is key to understanding the numerous educational, occupational, clinical, social and personal effects of COVID-19 in this population, he said. We want clinicians, and all people, to offset the disproportionate toll of this illness on individuals and families affected by intellectual and developmental disability.

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COVID-19 Disproportionately Impacting Those With Developmental Disabilities - Disability Scoop

COVID-19 is disrupting just about every students 2020 education, but medical students have it particularly hard right now.

Its a nightmare scenario for the class of 2021, said Jake Berg, a fourth-year student at the Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pikeville. In March, students were abruptly pulled out of hospitals and medical offices, where they normally work with professionals to learn about treating patients. Over the space of less than two weeks, he said, medical students in pretty much the entire country transitioned from seeing patients in person to learning online.

Everyone goes along with the idea that were all in the same boat together, he said. But, really, its like were all on the Titanic and its sinking.

Megan Messinger, in her fourth year at the Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California, calculates she has lost about 400 hours of patient time. She worries the class of 2021 is going to be the dumb class of interns, said Messinger, who hopes to do a combined residency in pediatrics and psychiatry. I feel very behind.

The problem is most acute for medical students in their third and fourth years of study. Year three is when most medical students do their core clinical clerkships. These are one- or two-month stints in hospitals and clinics, through which they get the flavor of specialties such as internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery and obstetrics/gynecology.

Fourth-year students tend to spend time in more specialized options, often traveling to get experience in specialties in short supply at their own medical schools affiliated hospitals, and also to informally audition at places they might like to apply to for residency. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, however, away rotations have been suspended, and residency interviews for next years graduating class will be done virtually.

Schools and hospitals are trying to restore the core clerkships but, in many areas, this is a work in progress. The uncertainty adds considerably to students stress levels.

I have no idea how I will learn about the culture of the hospitals Im applying to, said Garrett Johnson, a fourth-year student at Harvard Medical School. On one hand, this years class of doctors-to-be will save a lot of money typically, travel and housing costs for away rotations and in-person residency interviews are paid by the students. On the other hand, he said, you dont get to meet any of the people or get a feel for the place.

Karissa LeClair, a fourth-year student at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, agreed. I was looking forward to getting to know places I had not been to previously, she said.

LeClair, who wants to become an ear, nose and throat specialist, said clerkships she applied to in New York City, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Boston were all canceled.

Since she was not planning to be in New Hampshire for most of this year, LeClair now has no place to live near Dartmouth. Im piecing together sublets and staying with friends, she said. Unless something changes, she will spend her final year of medical school only in facilities formally affiliated with Dartmouth.

Messinger is facing similar problems in Southern California. Im at Cedars right now, and loving it, she said, referring to Los Angeless Cedars Sinai medical center. But you can only do one rotation there. I dont have anything scheduled after this. My only audition rotation, at Tulane, was canceled.

Administrators are sympathetic. They have had major disruption, said Dr. Alison Whelan, chief medical education officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges, which oversees M.D.-degree programs. Medical school is stressful, and with COVID its even more stressful.

I feel for the students, theyre really in a tough position, said Dr. Robert Cain, president, and CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, which oversees osteopathy programs. About 1 in 4 U.S. medical students pursue a doctorate in osteopathy, which is similar to an M.D. degree but includes training in hands-on manipulative techniques and more emphasis on whole-body health.

Starting this year, M.D. and D.O. students are competing for the same residency training programs and work side by side, a change planned before the pandemic.

One hurdle is that all these students, in order to become well-rounded doctors, need to see a broad mix of patients with a diverse group of medical issues. But even at hospitals and clinics that have resumed general care, patients with ailments other than those associated with COVID-19 are not showing up, because they are afraid of catching the coronavirus. Elsewhere elective procedures have been canceled or postponed.

That has become a challenge, Whelan said. In areas with high COVID-19 rates, hospitals and other facilities often do not have enough personal protective equipment for even essential health personnel, so students are kept out.

The AAMC in August updated its guidance on student participation in clinical rotations. It continued to leave decisions about allowing students into patient care areas up to individual teaching hospitals and medical schools. But it also noted that while students are not technically essential in day-to-day care activities, medical students are the essential, emerging physician workforce whose learning is necessary to prevent future medical shortages.

The progression of students over time for relatively on-time graduation is essential to the physician workforce, Whelan said. Enabling students to finish their education in the COVID-19 era is an ongoing, complex, jigsaw puzzle.

Both the M.D. and D.O. organizations said third-year students can still complete most of their required rotations, although perhaps not in the usual order, and schools have dramatically increased their use of online teaching of diagnostics and care.

A fair amount of what students do is observation, she said. So schools have created step-by-step videos.

And some educators are confident these students will catch up eventually. Most learning goes on during your residency, said Dr. Art Papier, who teaches dermatology at the University of Rochester medical school. I think it can all be made up.

In addition to losing in-person patient contact, medical students face obstacles in taking required national board examinations there are several types and are not always conveniently offered near their training sites.

After having one required test canceled on short notice, student Jake Berg had to reschedule. The first open seat was three hours away and a couple of weeks later; then his canceled test was reinstated.

The exam that tests clinical skills has been postponed for all M.D. students but is expected to be rescheduled.

The comparable exam for osteopathic students, however, has been made optional. Thats partly because D.O. students must demonstrate not only clinical skills, but also proficiency in physical manipulation techniques, which means they need to work with patients under the supervision of doctors as part of their test. But the D.O. clinical skills exam is offered only in two places: Chicago and outside Philadelphia.

If theres a self-isolation period, who can afford to spend two weeks in a hotel in Chicago or Philadelphia? asked Messinger, of Western University.

While the travel may be a burden, the exams are needed to protect the public from doctors who have not demonstrated competence, said Cain, of the osteopathic colleges association.

Whelan and Cain said details are being worked out and changes are possible as the COVID situation evolves.

In the end, Cain said, this crop of students may emerge from COVID as better doctors than those who didnt face such challenges.

Hopefully, well look back and see them as the class of resilience, he said. That they were able to work through some very hard times.

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Med Students 'Feel Very Behind' Because of COVID-Induced Disruptions in Training - The Southern Maryland Chronicle

Black doctors make up less than 6 percent of the physicians in America, and a recently introduced bill seeks to help encourage more young doctors of color through a $1 billion grant to several medical schools.

The Expanding Medical Education Act, introduced in the Senate last week by Tim Kaine, D-Va., was drafted to offer a pathway to "tackle the lack of representation of rural students, underserved students, and students of color in the physician pipeline," it says. The goal would be to reduce mistrust in doctors and health care institutions among marginalized communities, thus narrowing the gap in health care.

The legislation would encourage recruiting, enrolling and retaining Black students in medical schools and help fund programs for schools that mostly serve students from marginalized backgrounds.

The ultimate goal, Kaine said, is to increase the talent pool by making the path to medical school less arduous and more affordable. The idea is that if there are more Black doctors, more of them could tend to underserved communities.

"If this bill will add to the number of brown and Black doctors, then that's a good thing," said Donald Alcendor, an associate professor of microbiology and immunology at Meharry Medical College, a historically Black institution in Nashville, Tennessee. "There simply are not enough doctors who look like the patients in the underserved communities. And this systemic distrust [these] communities have for the medical system is something that is long-standing and has at least a chance of being overcome with Black doctors' presence to create a better patient-doctor relationship."

As a 2006 study cited by the National Institutes of Health outlines, Black populations say they distrust medical providers because of factors like perceived racism or greed. More broadly, systemic racial segregation cultivated a gap in health care, and several high-profile cases through American history were found to have used Black people for medical experimentation against their will or without their consent.

Black doctors agree that the need for more physicians of color is critical, for many reasons, and that funneling money and attention to historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, is "a start," said Dr. Pierre Vigilance, an adjunct professor of health policy and management at George Washington University's Milken Institute School of Public Health.

"There's almost no choice but to diversify the pool," Vigilance said. "Teams that are diverse create better results. If you have only one type of demographic in physicians, you will get a certain set of outcomes. But if you have a diverse team that is willing to go into distressed areas, you can address some of these concerns. You can break barriers and you can improve outcomes."

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The Expanding Medical Education Act would:

The House version of the bill was introduced in January by Jim Costa, D-Calif., but it has not made any progress.

Javaune Adams-Gaston, president of Norfolk State University, the largest HBCU in Virginia, which boasts a renowned nursing program, said in a statement that she supports the bill and that it "will help to address these disparities and diversify the physician pipeline by providing the financial resources."

The four historically Black medical colleges Meharry, Morehouse School of Medicine, Howard University College of Medicine and Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science pride themselves on serving Black communities. Morehouse recently received a $40 million grant from the Department of Health and Human Services to work with communities of color in relation to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Vigilance, who led the District of Columbia's response to the H1N1 swine flu virus in distressed areas in 2009, however, warned against assuming Black doctors will want to work in poor or underserved areas.

"The assertion often made that these providers will go back to the community they serve also makes the assumption that they come from low-income communities," he said. "That's true for some but not all."

In the end, he said, the two goals remain to "make opportunities for more doctors of color and to build teams that are diverse because teams that are diverse create better solutions to challenges or problems. If you diversify that health care provider group or health system, and if you're truly about this notion of population health and community wellness. . . now have no choice but to diversify the provider pool."

Medical school enrollment was up by 31 percent last year, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. But Blacks made up about 7 percent of medical college students in 2017 and Hispanics made up 6 percent. Enrollment in rural medical programs is also on the decline, which is a concern since the existing doctors in more remote areas are aging and retiring, and not being replaced fast enough.

The cost of medical school averaging at about $60,000 a year at a private college could also deter prospective Black students.

"Just applying for medical schools can be cost-prohibitive, let alone the interviewing process, pre-COVID-19, flying around the country," Vigilance said. He added that a typical student would apply to at least 10 medical colleges at $170 per application, with a second fee of around $41 for a secondary application. "So you're already well into the thousands of dollars just to apply."

Alcendor agrees. "If this bill can reduce some of the medical school debt that you incur going to medical school, this could be very helpful," he said. "To increase the possibility of people who don't have the means but have the talent to go to medical school is important. We had a student making straight As but couldn't pay for medical school and had to sit out."

As for Black doctors helping build trust in the medical system, it will always be a tough hurdle with African Americans people. "This bill is a start to perhaps making some inroads on a lot of areas," Vigilance said. "It doesn't have all the answers but it's a good piece. And that would be better than where we are."

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A bill would spend $1 billion on diversifying medical schools to close the racial health gap - NBC News

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Reaffirms emphasis on technology, community outreach

Eva Aagaard, MD, senior associate dean for education and the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Professor of Medical Education at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, demonstrates how a lightboard in the school's Instructional Design Studio allows instructors to face online viewers while writing on the board. Nearly a year old, the studio lets faculty record lectures with supplemental and interactive features. An essential part of the school's new curriculum, the studio also was instrumental in transitioning to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dozens of faculty, students and staff at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have committed countless hours over the past three years to planning a new curriculum that will launch in September with the arrival of incoming medical students.

Although faculty, students and staff didnt know it, they also were preparing for the sudden, unprecedented jolt from in-person to remote learning that occurred in mid-March, when COVID-19 shuttered much of the country, including much of the Medical Campus.

The pandemic shutdown meant that first- and second-year medical students couldnt attend the required lectures and hands-on lab instruction in anatomy, pathology, histology, microbiology and other basic sciences. Nor could the students participate in small group classes that emphasized other essential medical skills such as communication, medical ethics and conducting patient exams.

Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Childrens Hospital, where the MD students train, ceased virtually all nonessential medical procedures in order to curb virus transmission, preserve hospital beds and ventilators for COVID-19 patients and protect student health. This meant third-year students couldnt finish their clinical rotations a critical experience that helps physicians-in-training gain core clinical skills and discover the specialties theyre interested in pursuing during the final year of medical school and into residency.

Everything as we knew it had stopped, and we didnt know we still dont know the length or the severity of the pandemics impact, said Eva Aagaard, MD, the School of Medicines senior associate dean for education and the Carol B. and Jerome T. Loeb Professor of Medical Education. But we knew we had to continue educating our students so they could transition to the next year of training or to residency, and we know we have to deliver a new curriculum to our incoming students, and it all must be outstanding.

The new curriculum ensured such goals were met. Not to say there werent bumps, because there were. But the foundation of the new curriculum helped to ease the transition to remote learning while also providing an impromptu dress rehearsal that has allowed educators to troubleshoot, tweak and improve the curriculum before its rollout.

Designed to reflect the fast-moving changes in the health-care industry, the new curriculum was less than a year from launching when the pandemic hit. Two of its main pillars include expanding and enhancing technologyto promote innovative and effective teaching and learning, as well as fostering a better understanding of the social and economic factors that influence health.

Already in place was much of the medical schools upgraded, state-of-the-art technology supporting video-based education, as well as its commitment to ending health inequalities and expanding community health efforts. Planning for the new curriculum also had driven the medical schools collective mindset toward innovation and creativity.

The time we have spent on designing the new curriculum, and the investments in technology and other resources to support it, meant we were prepared in a way that many other places werent, Aagaard said.

Nearly a year ago, for instance, the medical school debuted the Instructional Design Studio, a 700-square-foot space in the lower level of Bernard Becker Medical Library. The studio includes a formal sound-proof video-recording studio with green-screen technology, as well as a smaller do-it-yourself studio. This allows faculty to record lectures with supplemental and interactive features that the medical school can archive in a digital library and students can access at any time.

Few medical schools have a studio and dedicated resources to develop and produce educational videos, said Carolyn Dufault, PhD, assistant dean for educational technology and innovation in the Office of Medical Student Education. We have spent the past few years working closely with faculty to examine how and why we will deliver parts of the new curriculum through video resources, and to create and produce dynamic, high-quality, clinically relevant video resources to enhance student engagement with course materials and promote meaningful, durable learning.

The relationships formed between faculty and the Instructional Design Studio team which includes Dufault; Erin Morris, an educational specialist and instructional designer; and Matt Rice, a veteran videographer have been invaluable during the pandemic, Dufault said. Mutual trust and respect had already been established, she said. This allowed for a quick pivot when we needed to help faculty move entire classes to a distance-learning format.

Added Morris: It especially helped because many of the faculty I had been working with already had the mindset of pushing creative boundaries and trying new things.

In March, the now ubiquitous Zoom was a novelty for many faculty, students and staff. Everyone just had to use it and learn, Morris said. But because the curriculum-building process has heavily emphasized innovation, faculty embraced ideas about customizing Zoom to their instructional needs for instance, accessing breakout rooms for small group discussions.

Third-year students used the breakout features on Zoom and other online technologies as private rooms to take summative exams, attend office hours with instructors and brainstorm with fellow students.

They trained via Zoom in the Wood Simulation Center, which comprises four rooms of the Farrell Learning and Teacher Center that resemble clinical settings and offer mannequins as patients. Led by registered nurse Julie Woodhouse, director of the medical schools immersive learning centers, the simulation classes involved quadrants on students electronic screens offering multiple vantage points of the patient and vital signs.

The formative, simulated clinical experiences gave students an opportunity to work through some acute scenarios in a safe setting and without a faculty or resident telling them how to manage the situations, Woodhouse said. They are allowed to determine diagnosis and patient management by relying on themselves. After each scenario, a faculty member debriefs the actions in the scenario what the students did well and what they could do to manage the situation better.

Brittany Novak, a simulation technician, operated the simulator and acted as the patients voice, while Woodhouse served as the bedside nurse, following the students patient-care instructions.

Students also participated virtually for the Objective Simulated Clinical Exams, which are required after each clinical rotation. They treated patients one on one in Zoom breakout rooms. Their patients were actors who followed a script. After the exam, students wrote patient assessments in an online learning management system called Canvas, while the patients scored students using a checklist in Qualtrics, an online survey platform.

The experiences may have felt artificial or awkward, but I asked the students to think of it like telehealth or an electronic intensive care unit, where the physician is in a separate location from the patient and bedside staff, Woodhouse said. The pandemic has put a spotlight on telehealth. Its likely to continue to play an increased role in patient care.

Besides the importance of telehealth, the switch to remote learning offered additional lessons for the new curriculum, said Thomas M. De Fer, MD, a professor of medicine and associate dean of medical student education. For example, students favor technology for lectures and test-taking, but they also crave in-person communications. Constant online meetings, known to cause whats referred to as Zoom fatigue, is real.

A positive point is that we can make these adjustments to the new curriculum, De Fer said. We can better provide a combination of virtual learning that involves interacting with others on Zoom, for example, and virtual learning that allows students to work on their own time, such as video lectures.

Additionally, the new curriculum will offer students a flexible learning format called hybrid, because it combines face-to-face learning and online learning. The emergent transition to teaching via an electronic platform did not give us months to think about fancy-schmancy things we might want to do, De Fer added. It was a crash course that gave us experience and confidence in online learning, and it taught us important lessons that we will use moving forward.

The suspension of clinical rotations caused logistical headaches and high anxiety among faculty and, especially, students. But during the three months from mid-March to mid-June, when the third-year students were authorized to complete final rotations, students were provided numerous opportunities in compassionate medicine through assisting community organizations and health-care workers responding to the pandemic.

From first years to fourth years, scores of Washington University medical students volunteered to deliver meals to at-risk quarantined people and COVID patients, babysit the children of health-care workers, and create thousands of face shields and masks. Among other activities, they also assisted with contact tracing at area health departments and offered educational outreach to St. Louis African-American and Latino residents, who are most vulnerable to COVIDs adverse effects.

As a medical student, it was difficult to watch from the sidelines as the pandemic became a worldwide crisis, said Connie Gan, a rising fourth-year student and president of the Class of 2021. Other students had similar feelings. This spurred a massive COVID-19 volunteer effort, and, though it wasnt patient care, it was satisfying to provide public health support to front-line health-care workers. We learned important skills individually and, as an institution, we saw firsthand the enormous impact of community engagement in the region. I believe this momentum will grow as we roll out the new curriculum.

Washington University School of Medicines 1,500 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, ranking among the top 10 medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Childrens hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

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Pandemic acts as dress rehearsal for new medical school curriculum - Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis

Hardly a day goes by without a story in the news media on the unsettled state of higher education this fall. The importance of opening our campuses is not in dispute. The question is: Can we do it safely?

Colleges and universities are implementing an array of programs to answer that question affirmatively, limiting classrooms to half or a quarter of their capacity, investing in online education for hybrid teaching, banning athletic events and other large gatherings, re-engineering dining services and residence halls, and putting programs in place that test for the virus.

As public health experts have pointed out, however, these preventative measures do not all carry the same weight. One element looms over the others in importance: effective testing. Without it, campuses are blind, and the virus -- no matter what other steps are taken -- has a good chance of taking hold.

How do colleges and universities measure up on the all-important testing front? Most programs are woefully inadequate, the experts say, making moot the many other costly precautions they are putting in place. Comprehensive testing may appear too logistically challenging and financially infeasible for these institutions or they may not recognize its significance as the keystone of their safety programs.

Yet some institutions, including Colby College, Columbia University, Yale University and the University of Vermont, have overcome these barriers and put in place the kind of testing protocols that stand a good chance of keeping the coronavirus at bay.

How did they manage?

The testing program at the University of Vermont, developed in concert with public health and infectious disease experts on the faculty in our medical school, is one of the most comprehensive in the country. I hope that by enumerating its components -- and costs -- others can see that such extensive programs are more feasible than may be generally thought.

At the advice of our faculty, our testing program begins at the beginning, keeping sick students home and away from campus. In the coming weeks, we will test all of our returning 12,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students in their homes and require them to have a negative result before they set foot on campus. To assist in this effort, we have retained Vault Health, which has expertise in the delivery, retrieval and accurate cataloging of a variety of health tests. Rutgers University will process the tests and share the results with us.

Once they arrive, our program tests all on- and off-campus students, not just symptomatic ones. We know nearly half of all COVID-19 transmission comes from non-symptomatic carriers; testing only those with symptoms -- as many colleges will do -- is no way to stop the spread of the virus. The Broad Institute, affiliated with Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will assist us in this effort and expects to return test results within 24 hours.

Testing at our university will be frequent and free for users, so there are no cost barriers. Since it takes about a week for the virus to take hold in the body, we will test all 12,000 students when they arrive on campus and once a week thereafter -- a rate recommended by our medical school faculty -- for five weeks and then at a frequency dictated by the data generated by earlier tests.

And we have provisioned space for students who test positive, so they can be placed in supportive isolation.

All employees working on campus can also access our testing free of charge.

The testing program is not inexpensive, but we believe we must not hesitate to spend on this critical enabler of safe fall operations. We estimate that it will cost the university $8 to $10million over just the fall semester. (All told, the COVID-induced financial impact for the year could exceed $60million at our institution.)

Why? We view the cost of testing as an investment, and measure ROI both educationally, in the quality of the experience we'll be able to offer students, and financially, as more students are persuaded to persist this fall in a safe on-campus setting. In simple cost-benefit terms, it is money well spent.

Even with an effective testing program, not all colleges or universities will be able to welcome students back to campus. For those in densely populated cities in areas of the country where the virus is surging, an online semester may indeed be the only safe option. And some institutions will be unable to afford the expense, given already precarious finances across higher ed.

But for many others, an ambitious, science-based testing program just could make possible the experience we all desire: a full semester of rich on-campus learning. Without it, even the most well-intentioned efforts are destined to fail.

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Testing is the key to a successful fall reopening on campuses (opinion) - Inside Higher Ed

As I sat down to reflect on my third year of medical school, I was once again unhinged by the feelings I thought I had suppressed only a few months prior. My monthly emergency medicine periodical had arrived, and I was looking forward to reading the unique case reports. It didnt take me long to see this would be a more earnest edition; the topic was the familiar COVID-19.

I made it to the periodicals more subjective pieces and was struck with a moment of stillness; maybe it was the impending rain outside. Two words from the page jumped out significantly: vulnerability and courage. These words have always had different meanings to me. Until recently, vulnerability meant weakness, allowing oneself to fall behind without a chance for recovery. Courage, on the other hand, had the opposite meaning: betting all my chips on prevailing at any cost.

These two words vulnerability and courage placed closely together reminded me of a particular patient I encountered not too long ago. Until that moment, I had not realized that she remained quietly in the shadows of my mind, watching to see if I would be vulnerable for my future patients. As the clouds darkened outside my dining room window, I began to relive this patient experience.

It was a night in early January, during my obstetrics and gynecology rotation. One of the weeks I spent there was a night call on labor and delivery. In retrospect, this was my favorite week of medical school besides being in the emergency room. The residents were cheerful, despite our lack of sleep. The nurses seemed to always be well-rested, maybe their secret brand of coffee. and even the patients, despite me being unable to understand what they were going through, made me feel as if I was doing them a rewarding service. My first night went well, three successful deliveries. It was the third night shift that upended everything I thought I knew and worked for.

I will never know her name because she never had one. The only history I was given from my resident was: This mother is in labor, any minute now. She came to her first prenatal appointment with us last week. She lives miles away in a very rural town and had little access to care. Maybe you should just wait for the next delivery.

I could not just give away a good learning opportunity. I had spent the previous week on day shift labor and delivery, so I was feeling more comfortable around childbirth. I was even beginning to enjoy the adrenaline of donning PPE and preparing for this challenge. Handing a baby over to mom is undeniably worth all of the time spent to get to this point. So, for this delivery, I did all the normal actions to prepare: shoe covers, gloves and gown. What I did not have was a contingency plan in case I experienced a personal emergency.

As we approached the room, my resident said, prepare yourself. She knew the seriousness of the situation long before but there was no time to explain. We walked in and the family was already crying. This was a natural reaction I had witnessed among other families during childbirth, but the air felt heavier than normal. Most rooms I previously entered had a board of patient demographics and the babys name. Some rooms even were scattered with beautiful flowers and balloons to celebrate the upcoming joy. This room had nothing besides moms name on the board. There was no indication of excitement centered around a newborn. While everyone sat quietly, I delivered a baby girl, at term, whose blood had stopped circulating long before we met.

I had never seen a family weep this severely, and I wanted to weep for them. Internally, I did, long enough to finish all stages of birth. I remember, as the resident and I delivered her, it seemed as if the air was sucked out of the room and the temperature rose drastically. I did not hear a cry as her head passed the perineum, nor did I feel the usual active movements of body tone.

What I saw was a lifeless, innocent face with blistered and discolored skin. We made eye contact for a brief moment; she looked perfect and still and had no way of knowing what occurred. The neonatal team stood ready for transfer to the warmer and quickly wrapped her in blankets and a homemade knitted hat. As I stayed to deliver the placenta. I heartbreakingly witnessed the family break down in tears at the sight of this baby girl. I stayed in the room for a brief period to console them, and then quickly excused myself so the family could have their time alone.

After I left the room, I was at loss as to what to do next. I sat and took the time to recover my thoughts. I knew the family would be assisted to a different unit with more privacy. I went back one last time to be a body of presence and hugged each of them. I honestly didnt know what to say, which may have been for the best because they didnt say anything either. Some moments in life speak for themselves.

For some time afterward, I was not quite sure what the lesson behind this experience would be. Why should I make a lesson out of an innocent life lost, I thought to myself. I am still seeking those answers. This morning, sitting in my dining room, those feelings re-emerged. I dont know if this nameless infant walks the hospital halls at night, visits her family to support them or even holds my hand and guides me to ensure that I continue the right path. All I can say is that I felt an overly visceral reaction to those two words on the page: vulnerability and courage.

I cannot for one second say I was prepared for that situation, and I admit I could never be prepared for a moment like that again even if I was pre-briefed. What I can say is that it was those same two words, vulnerability and courage, that allowed me to share this experience and will allow me to continue to fight for my patients. In desperate times, families need us. They look to us for courage even when we are just as broken on the inside as they are. In that context, we must remain vulnerable for them. We are equally as human as the patients we treat.

As COVID-19 is the word on everyones mind, I hope sharing my experience of vulnerability can help others as we continue to face these daily challenges. In truth, the future will never be certain. As I prepare for my return to the clinical setting, my nameless hero stands with me. She will be there in good times and in bad. She will always have the same gentle, innocent demeanor and will carry this message: stay vulnerable, even when scared of the future and maintain courage in the face of adversity.

Contributing Writer

University of Central Florida College of Medicine

Robert is a fourth year medical student at the University of Central Florida College of Medicine in Orlando, Florida class of 2021. In 2017, he graduated from University of Central Florida with a Bachelor of Science in health sciences and Minor in chemistry. He enjoys traveling, hiking, landscaping and personal finance in his free time. After graduating medical school, Robert would like to pursue a career in emergency medicine.

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The Unnamed Hero - Pager Publications, Inc.

Pixabay photo by Wokandapix

ALEXANDRIA, VA Have your kids expressed anxiety about returning to school, whether it is in-person or virtual, during this uncertain time? Do you feel like you need a little bit of guidance to help navigate the situation and lessen their concern?

On Thursday, August 13 at 7:30 p.m., the City of Alexandria and Exploration Kids are holding a virtual meeting to address concerns surrounding the start of school and child mental health. Back-to-School Worries: How to Protect Your Kids Mental Health is designed to give parents tools to help their children through the beginning of this very different school year.

Families and teachers have an important opportunity to partner together and deepen their relationships and trust with children learning from home, said Dr. Lacey Hilliard, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Suffolk University. We hope this discussion provides the support families need to address questions or worries children may have at this moment.

Attending the virtual meeting with Hilliard will be Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson; Alexandria Schools Superintendent Dr. Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr.; Dr. Stuart Ablon, Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School; Dr. Stacey Hardy-Chandler, who works with the City of Alexandria; and Susan Keightley from Child & Family Network Centers.

This free event is expected to reach almost 20,000 families and 2,000 teachers. It will be provided in English and Spanish To attend, register HERE.

Families are looking for reliable information and better ways to support their kids mental health while they learn from home this fall, said Michelle Millben, event moderator and founder of Explanation Kids.

For parents with young children, this sounds like a cant-miss opportunity. Soon after signing up, registrants will receive a Zoom link with appropriate credentials.

Event sponsors, seen in the above flyer, are providing donations to help families most affected by the pandemic.

ICYMI: Virginia Supreme Court Halts Eviction Proceedings Statewide Until September 7

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TUNE IN: Alexandria Addressing Back-to-School Worries in Virtual Town Hall - The Zebra

Claire Kowalick, Wichita Falls Times Record News Published 12:31 p.m. CT Aug. 10, 2020 | Updated 12:37 p.m. CT Aug. 10, 2020

In this 2019 photo, Community Healthcare Center celebrated their 25th anniversary. The center had added new locations throughout Wichita Falls and is now able to treat about 400 patients daily - twice their capacity previously.(Photo: CHRISTOPHER WALKER/TIMES RECORD NEWS)

Representatives from the Community Healthcare Center were honored with a proclamation from Wichita County Monday for National Health Center Week.

CEC CEO Alan Patterson said they are very proud of the work the health center does for the Wichita Falls area community.

In the past three years, the CEC has expanded greatly and now assists about 400 patients a day twice their previous patient capacity.

Recent projects include a CEC location near Zundy Elementary that opens this week and another location at the Wichita Falls campus of Vernon College, which will open in about two months.

Patterson said directly after the Wichita County Commissioners Court meeting, hewas headed to their CEC Third Street campus to oversee the start of a new medical student program for Wichita Falls.

On Monday, the first nine students began their orientation. Ten more students will be added in 2021 and another 10 the next year. The new medical school will have a capacity of 30 students where they can complete their second, third and fourth years of medical school right here in Wichita Falls.

In the past 21 weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic in the area, Patterson said the CECis the front line for many local patients.

In this time frame, the centers have seen about 38,000 patients and about 1,400 were tested for COVID-19. Patterson said of the patients tested, about 85 percent were negative and 15 percent positive for the virus.

In many cases, the CEC can treat COVID patients from start to finish, following the most recent recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Patterson credited Dr. Ellaheh Ebrahim at the center for doing an excellent job of treating patients by rigidly following the CDC guidelines, which can change daily.

Patterson said they conduct three different kinds of COVID-19 testes, PCR or advanced DNA testing, antibody and antigen. The most accurate COVID test, he said is the PCR, which they have luckily been able to conduct for most patients.

Unlike some other areas of the country, Patterson said the CEC is fortunate to get tests processed in less than two days in most cases.

While he did not want to go into exactly what course of medications patients are given to treat COVID-19, Patterson did say they do not use hydroxychloroquine, as it is not recommended by the CDC to treat COVID-19.

Masking is the most important vaccine the country has now, the director said, in preventing the spread of the virus.

Claire Kowalick, a senior journalist for the Times Record News, covers local government, military and MSU Texas. If you have a news tip, contact Claire at ckowalick@gannett.com.

Twitter: @KowalickNews

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Community Healthcare honored during National Health Center Week - Times Record News

Dr. Spinks-Franklin suggested a free downloadable ebook about coronavirus for children, put out in collaboration with the American Psychological Association. I actually read that with one of my patients through our online call, she said. She was just so anxious about coronavirus and we read the book together. Afterward, she said, she was able to articulate how much she learned from the book and what she can do and what her family can do to keep them safe.

If youre worried about your child, you may need some guidance in finding help in this changing landscape of remote therapy and tele-mental health. Often Ill tell people to start with their pediatrician, they often have a sense of whats available, and recommendations around mental health providers, Dr. Vinson said. Insurance companies have really lowered barriers around providing tele-mental health services, she said.

The summer may be a good time to look for a therapist if a child is struggling; as the school year picks up, schedules may fill. Talk to your childs primary care provider, talk to the school, consider reconnecting with a counselor or therapist who has seen your child before. If your child is already taking a medication for anxiety, for attentional issues, for depression talk to the doctor who prescribed it to see if an adjustment is indicated.

Remote mental health may be harder with young children, Dr. Kaslow said, though many therapists are finding ways to be really creative, asking children to show their favorite toys and how they play with them, and to talk about their home environments and how theyre feeling.

Dr. Vinson said that for many children with mental health problems, symptoms have gotten more severe. If they were anxious, theyre more anxious, if they were depressed, its harder, if its schizophrenia, the voices went up. Her own work as a child and adolescent psychiatrist has increased, she said, with children needing more help during the pandemic.

Updated August 6, 2020

Parents need to take their children seriously, Dr. Spinks-Franklin said. This is a very stressful time for adults and children, and we dont want to disregard it when a child tells us how stressed they are, how worried they are.

Cindy Liu, an assistant professor of pediatric newborn medicine and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and the director of the developmental risk and cultural resilience program, said that in a setting in which we are all now accustomed to thinking of the risks of viral infection, its important to consider stress contagion and the risks to those who are most vulnerable, and to families at higher risk because of structural racism and socioeconomic disparities.

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When Things Arent OK With a Childs Mental Health - The New York Times