Rapid Development, Training, and Implementation of a Remote Health Profession’s Student Volunteer Corps During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Public health in the United States has long been challenged by budget cuts and a declining workforce. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerabilities left by years of neglecting this crucial frontline defense against emerging infectious diseases. In the early days of the pandemic, the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Galveston County Health District (GCHD) partnered to bolster Galveston County’s public health response. We mobilized interprofessional teams of students and provided training to implement projects identified by GCHD as necessary for responding to the pandemic. We provided a safe outlet for students to contribute to their community by creating remote volunteer opportunities when students faced displacement from clinical rotations and in-person didactics converted to virtual formats. As students gradually returned to clinical rotations and didactic demands increased, it became necessary to expand volunteer efforts beyond what had initially been mostly hand-selected student teams. We have passed the initial emergency response phase of COVID-19 in Galveston County and are transitioning into more long-term opportunities as COVID-19 moves from pandemic to endemic. In this case study, we describe our successes and lessons learned.

Knowledge towards Biochemical Parameters of COVID–19 amongst First Professional Year Medicine Students: A Cross-sectional Study

“…Additionally, medical students are usually consulted for healthcare suggestions and biochemical report analysis from their known relations. This is because they tend to have a better knowledge than students of allied science branches when the health management issues [4,6] are considered. It is a known fact that this knowledge is more in medical students in their later stages of studies [7].…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus had its inception in Wuhan, China in December 2019, probably as a result of crossspecies transmission [1] affecting practically every country on the planet, causing largely moderate symptoms of the respiratory tract in which the majority was an infection of the upper portion of the tract [2,3] The reason why some people become seriously ill while others do not is still a mystery. For risk stratification, comorbidities and laboratory indicators have been proposed [4,5].…”

“…Hence, knowledge regarding the same in this first year students of basic science will be of immense help so that they can be an element of the treatment protocols and practices by obtaining patient case histories, diagnosing patients with laboratory results, collecting samples, tutoring patients, enlisting visits, and solving inquiries about the disease to their family, relatives, and neighbours, and increasing the efficiency of understaffed clinics [4]. This will facilitate an initial proactive management and help in designing an educational initiative plan of action.…”

Policies of voluntary services involved in public health emergencies in China: Evolution, evaluation, and expectation

“…A study regarding volunteer corps during the COVID-19 pandemic indicated that the flexibility of remote opportunities allowed volunteers' involvement in services. They may otherwise have been unable to participate due to personal or financial constraints ( 26 ). The government departments advocated making full use of the information platform to achieve the aim of systematic management of volunteer registration and recruitment in the service preparation stage.…”

Impact of COVID-19 on Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management System: A Scoping Review of Healthcare Workforce Management in COVID-19

“…Therefore, some countries used volunteers and students to cope with staff shortfalls. Many volunteers from government, clinical, public health, and non-medical areas were recruited to deal with COVID-19 surges [11,16,18,28,[46][47][48][49][50]. For example, Malaysia utilized volunteers from non-healthcare ministries, government agencies, and NGOs.…”