Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Emergency Restructuring in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic—Henry Ford Hospital, Michigan

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc and created challenges in various subspecialty training programs, including hematology/oncology fellowship programs. The challenge of social distancing, providing care for those infected by COVID-19, continuing appropriate treatment of time-sensitive diseases, and the looming threat of health care worker infections required swift planning and restructuring of training programs. The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education provided leeway to tackle the challenges faced by institutions and training programs in the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, there is no established guideline specific to hematology and oncology fellowship programs. While understanding that there is no one-size-fits-all, shared experiences can assist training programs to incorporate best practices and customize their programs to provide an active educational environment that balances patient care needs, didactics, scholarly activities, and wellbeing during the process of rapid changes and adaptation. We share our hematology/oncology fellowship program’s restructuring approach in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Developments in medical education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid BEME systematic review: BEME Guide No. 63

“…Six papers described retraining or redeploying learners to support the response to increased clinical service pressures. These included the accelerated graduation of medical students (Lapolla and Mingoli 2020), redeployment of postgraduate clinical trainees (from haematology and oncology to general medicine) to support care of COVID-19 patients (Balanchivadze and Donthireddy 2020), and reconfiguration of routine speciality care in order to avoid trainee viral exposure (Agarwal et al 2020). Three papers described using medical students to support clinical care, including launching medical student response teams to support physicians and public health agencies (Haines et al 2020;Soled et al 2020) and training medical students to work as ventilator or nursing assistants (Rasmussen et al 2020).…”

Medical Education During the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…62 Fellows in medical subspecialty programs also encountered a decrease in consultations and nonurgent outpatient care experiences salient to developing competence in their respective fields. 63 In response to this gap in learning and skill acquisition, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education recommended that program directors along with Clinical Competence Committees assess the competence of individual trainees for unsupervised clinical practice. 64 To sustain a beneficial educational experience, some programs established new academic committees to facilitate important didactic sessions and set scholarly goals for time not spent in direct patient care and promote the completion of research projects.…”

Effects of COVID-19 on EMS Refresher Course Completion and Delivery

“…Prior research has been limited, focusing on a single EMS system, an individual institution, or subspecialties within a single institution. 1,2,3,4 Knowing our ability to develop and deliver ongoing education during a prolonged event is important for the management and mitigation of education during future disasters. Unfortunately, there are very few national databases to assess the educational impact of COVID-19.…”