Medical students in Rome tapped to help
♦ The coronavirus emergency presents a rare opportunity to learn new skills.
Any difficulty can be an opportunity to learn, and a few students at the Medical College of Georgia are in the midst of applying that maxim.
The third- and fourth-year students who are finishing their academic work in Rome are helping combat the COVID-19 health emergency in a variety of ways, according to Dr. Leonard Reeves, associate dean of the Northwest Georgia Clinical Campus.
When the campus in Rome was placed on pause a month ago, Reeves and the rest of the instructional staff started to look for opportunities for the two groups of students. They immediately found a willing partner in the Georgia Department of Public Health.
Enter two third-year students, Daniel
Alligood of Dublin, who received his undergraduate degree from Berry College, and Chloe Super of Atlanta.
The two are participating in a curriculum that exposes them to a broad spectrum of medical specialties — and the COVID-19 emergency is a chance to sharpen their skills. “Mostly what we are doing is, physicians will call us and say they have a patient that they suspect has COVID-19 and want them to get tested,” Super said. “We see if they meet the current triage criteria, which changes as we get more and more tests.”
When there was an extremely limited number of tests available, they gave top priority to health care workers, those in nursing homes and vulnerable populations including patients with underlying conditions, Alligood explained.
“Now that we have more tests, we’re able to expand testing to patients who are symptomatic but might not meet some of the other criteria,” he said.
One of the key goals is to prevent the expansion of exposure to the virus inside the health care community, Reeves said.
If the patients are eligible, they are directed to one of the two drive-through clinics in Rome or Cartersville.
The medical students are in the fourth week of that program.
“Last week was supposed to be their spring break and our students decided, ‘hey, what are we going to do?’ — So they worked through their spring break,” Reeves said.
Another group of students is working with Dr. Matt McClain and his plasma treatment study. The idea is to use plasma transfusions from people who have recovered from COVID-19 to help seriously ill patients fight off the infection.
“That response has been pretty impressive,” Super said. “Most people that we contact are very willing right away to donate plasma. If they feel like that is going to help somebody else recover, they’re very willing to do that.”
This is an interesting time to be in training, Alligood said.
“Hopefully we won’t have to experience this at another time in our lives,” Alligood said.
But you take the good with the bad and he said he’s learned a lot about responding to an emergency crisis.
Both said they’ve been impressed with the coordination that has been exhibited by the medical community in the Rome area.
“For me it’s been fascinating at how quickly we’ve been able to get clinical trials up and running like the plasma study,” Super said.
If they feel
like that is going to help somebody else recover, they’re very willing to do
that.”
Chloe Super