Medical Students in Europe and U.S. Graduate Early to Join Coronavirus Front-Lines ‘It’s best to have as many hands as possible, even if they’re relatively unskilled hands like mine’
https://www.wsj.com/articles/medical-students-in-europe-and-u-s-graduate-early-to-join-coronavirus-front-lines-11587233541
Young students just finishing medical schools across the U.S. and Europe are being rushed into hospitals overwhelmed by the new coronavirus to combat a global health catastrophe.
Many are forgoing final elective classes, logging onto Zoom or Webex to recite the Hippocratic oath and donning protective gear to begin their careers, often in areas far from the specialties they plan to pursue.
“We finished exams in March, and two days later we were asked if we would volunteer to work in hospitals. We didn’t even have our results then,” said Caroline Olabisi, 29, who trained in London. Some of her final exams were canceled because of safety concerns.
“They just sent us an email saying we’d been awarded the degree on the same day as we got our results.” She started work in a London hospital three weeks ago.
“Now, we just have to learn on the job,” Dr. Olabisi said. “This week, I’ve had to do two 12-hour nursing shifts and have been putting IV lines in under supervision from consultants. Things that I wouldn’t usually be doing.”
Julia Probert says she has ‘a waxing and waning course of nervousness’ as she reckons with the possibility of contracting Covid-19.
Julia Probert, 31, is heading to a residency in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in July. But until then, she is reporting for duty at Bellevue Hospital in New York, having signed up for early graduation from New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine.
“It’s best to have as many hands as possible, even if they’re relatively unskilled hands like mine,” Dr. Probert said. Since agreeing to graduate early, she said, she has had “a waxing and waning course of nervousness” as she reckons with the possibility of contracting Covid-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, and wonders how she can be of most help in the hospital.
She has received what she says is expedited but still thorough training on maintaining life support and on how to put on and remove protective gear safely. For her first week, Dr. Probert—described on her work ID as a “Covid-19 junior physician”—has mainly been on standby for the internal-medicine department at Bellevue, ready to be called in if the unit gets overwhelmed or other doctors fall ill.
Parts of the hospital feel empty, she said, since elective procedures have been canceled. But she has been heartened to see other doctors from other specialties helping and pitching in however they can. “It makes you feel hopeful,” she said.
It isn’t only in New York, the current epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, where young doctors are being drafted into wards early. Early graduations have taken place in Massachusetts, Oregon, Louisiana and elsewhere across the country.
The new graduates, who matched into residency programs in March, are still slated to begin those programs in July. But until then, many have signed short-term contracts to work for the hospitals associated with their medical schools, or elsewhere, in whatever capacity they can.
State licensing agencies have approved the unorthodox temporary employment, allowing these medical-school graduates to practice with supervision, says Dr. Alison Whelan, chief medical officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Abigail Rees, who graduated early from the University of Nottingham, says her cohorts ‘prepped for a gradual, trickled entrance. Now we’re being thrown into the deep end.’
Photo: Abigail Rees
She says hospitals are establishing new roles for the new workers: assigning them jobs as scribes to write down notes for a doctor conducting a physical exam, organizing lab results, or speaking on the phone with people concerned about whether they need to be tested or who want to check on their loved ones inside the hospital.
Most fourth-year students already finished their required clinical work before hospitals suspended such rotations in March to save protective gear and limit students’ exposure to the virus. When the offer came, many jumped at the chance to join the ranks of other doctors on the front lines.
The University of Illinois College of Medicine graduated 192 students early, or about two-thirds of its class. The University of Massachusetts Medical School moved up graduation for 135 students. Dr. Probert was one of 52 students from her class of 122 at NYU who graduated in early April, about a month ahead of schedule.
In the U.K, Dr. Olabisi is one of 7,500 newly qualified doctors who are in the process of being added to the U.K.’s health-care workforce three months early. Since the General Medical Council, the government body that maintains the country’s register of medical practitioners, opened registration last week, it has fast-tracked about 3,000 of them.
Known as interim doctors, they will be tasked with taking notes, making rounds of wards and ordering tests. And with an estimated one-in-four of the country’s medics either off sick or in isolation, they might be needed to manage patients.
“Every week, it’s just got more and more intense. The first week, I felt like they didn’t need me, there were loads of people there, and this week there’s been so much pressure. I don’t think it’s going to get any better,” said Dr. Olabisi. In the hospital where she volunteers, people are being redeployed from different specialties. Since nonessential surgeries were canceled on March 17, surgeons have been doing nursing shifts to help.
Like many other final-year medics in the U.K., Dr. Olabisi was due to complete her elective training abroad, after which she would have spent time shadowing a junior doctor and attended lectures at university preparing her for work. She and her peers would then have had a summer vacation before starting work in August.
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Some say they have felt pressure to volunteer. “Our medical school keeps saying this is voluntary, this is voluntary, but nothing’s ever that simple,” said Abigail Rees, a 22-year-old who graduated early from the University of Nottingham on April 8. “Being a doctor is all I’ve ever wanted, so it feels almost counterintuitive to go against that. It doesn’t feel voluntary in my heart.”
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