The University of Kansas School of Medicine is joining the ranks of institutions like Harvard University and New York University to muster additional health-care workers battling the COVID-19 pandemic.
More than 50 senior students from KU’s three medical schools in Kansas City, Wichita and Salina have asked to graduate early to participate in the Kansas Pandemic Volunteer Health Care Workforce. The program will deploy them throughout Kansas as part of the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school said in a news release.
That will allow them to serve in areas of critical need across the state immediately, before their traditional medical residencies. Those are slated to begin July 1 at medical centers around the nation.
“There is a potential for extreme stress on health-care systems in urban and rural settings due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Mike Kennedy, associate dean of Rural Health Education for the school. “Many rural physicians are already overworked, and the addition of a surge in health care utilization could overburden these physicians to the breaking point.”
Across Kansas, he said, 34 counties out of 105 counties have just one or two physicians for the entire county. There are also many rural practices and health care systems that are under significant financial strain and may be insolvent by the end of the pandemic unless help is provided.
“This all-volunteer program will provide assistance where
it‘s needed in Kansas, including rural Kansas where the need may quickly outpace the available physicians,” said former governor Jeff Colyer, a physician and clinical associate professor at the school. “
It could be a national model for how recent medical school graduates can help meet critical rural needs.”
“These senior medical students may provide meaningful relief during this time of crisis,” Kennedy added.
About the same time KU announced the early graduations, the American Medical Association released
guidance for medical schools and health systems on the involvement of medical students and early graduates.
“There are many opportunities for students to contribute to the clinical care of patients without engaging in direct physical contact with patients,” an introduction to the guidance reads. “However, in some institutions, the work-force demands may be great enough that it is appropriate to consider including medical students in direct patient care.”
Among other recommendations, the AMA advises institutions to allow students to freely choose whether they would like to be involved in direct patient care, without incentives or coercion. Medical students should be given proper personal protective equipment and training on how to use it. Medical students should not be financially responsible for their own diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 should they become sick from school-approved activities, the association said.
