Frontline Redeployment of Psychiatry Residents During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Pathways between COVID-19 public health responses and increasing overdose risks: A rapid review and conceptual framework

“…Another public health response frequently discussed in the literature were staff and resource reductions, often due to reallocations in order to focus on responding to the COVID-19 pandemic ( Villarin, Gao, & McCann, 2020 ). This has the result of decreasing the availability of services and treatments that prevent overdoses, such as harm reduction services/resources, supervised consumption sites, overdose outreach and prevention programs, recovery programs, peer support programs, withdrawal management programs, and OAT ( Bandara, Kennedy-Hendricks, Merritt, Barry, & Saloner, 2020 ; Bonn et al., 2020 ; Collins, Ndoye, Arene-Morley, & Marshall, 2020 ; Collins, Beaudoin, Samuels, Wightman, & Baird, 2020 ; Dunlop et al., 2020 ; Halpern, 2020 ; Hsu et al., 2020 ; Khatri & Perrone, 2020 ; Lapeyre-Mestre et al., 2020 ; MacKinnon et al., 2020 ; Slavova et al., 2020 ; Sun et al., 2020 ).…”

Competence vs. Identity, Trainees vs. Physicians: How COVID-19 Has Highlighted Role Confusion in Residency Training

“…There have been multiple reports and first-hand accounts of psychiatry residents being re-deployed to cover other services, especially during the initial stages of the pandemic [20][21][22][23][24], including working in ICUs and COVID units [22,23]. One program from New York re-deployed all 13 of their PGY-2 psychiatry residents to cover COVID units [20].…”

“…A previous publication in this journal detailed the accounts of a rural program that reassigned psychiatry interns to internal medicine services, with one PGY-5 who was also completing a Preventative Medicine program being put in a position to help to coordinate their states' COVID response [21]. Another psychiatry program from New York detailed that of 46 total residents in their program, the first to be re-deployed were interns, assumingly mandatory, and volunteers from the PGY-4 class; when all was said and done, 35 of the 46 residents had experienced re-deployment [23]. One report from a PGY-3 psychiatry resident who "volunteered" to work on an internal medicine COVID unit wrote positively about the experience, and also acknowledged facing their own mortality and having to write their will before being deployed [24].…”

Impact of COVID-19 on Hematology-Oncology Fellowship Programs: A Quantitative and Qualitative Survey Assessment of Fellowship Program Directors

“…Redeployment of trainees to cover clinical services outside their training specialty has been reported in epicenters of the pandemic and raises concerns about the challenges and the longterm impact of COVID-19 on trainee well-being as residents and fellows across different specialties are redeployed to practice outside their scope of current training. 27,28 An added challenge faced by PDs and GME programs during the pandemic is ensuring that the education, research training, and professional development of trainees is not compromised during the pandemic. Similar to other training programs, 22,23 the large majority of HO PDs transitioned their educational conferences to the virtual environment.…”

“…Redeployment of trainees to cover clinical services outside their training specialty has been reported in epicenters of the pandemic and raises concerns about the challenges and the long-term impact of COVID-19 on trainee well-being as residents and fellows across different specialties are redeployed to practice outside their scope of current training. 27,28…”