https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/health/medical-school-coronavirus-students.html
Last Friday, more than 40,000 medical students across the country found out where they will be doing their three-year residencies, the first step in their medical careers. But at most universities, match day ceremonies were either canceled or held virtually on Zoom. And for students, the experience was shaped by thoughts of the role they will play on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Dr. Alison Whelan, the chief medical education officer of the association, said that students might be needed to provide assistance in clinical settings as the outbreak worsens, but would be called to serve only in a voluntary capacity.
“We’re all here because we want to help, and yet we are helpless,” said David Edelman, a fifth-year student at Columbia Medical School. “How do we reconcile our reason for coming here with our inability to do anything?”
For Mr. Edelman, that question became a call to action. Earlier this month, he helped establish the Covid-19 Student Service Corps, which coordinates medical students to support health care providers.
On Sunday, the group released a tool kit listing support roles that students can play: staffing coronavirus community hotlines, providing technical support for telemedicine platforms, coordinating food deliveries for health care workers and creating educational briefings with up-to-date research and news on the virus.
Some tasks, like staffing the hotline, require clinical experience. Others, like meal deliveries, do not. The Covid-19 Student Service Corps is based at Columbia, but members say they are coordinating with medical students nationwide to establish other chapters.
Other medical colleges are also doing that. Today opted students were given the training and logistical details to take / make calls and help the overburdened front line staff in both clinical and non-clinical (call centers) areas.