How did your institute react when the pandemic started? What changes were made early on?
Dr. Marshall: We had a brisk and timely response. We switched many nonessential patient visits to virtual visits. We had a robust tech support team and were able to conduct a lot of video visits and conferences. If patients did not have video capability, phone visits were used.
Within our training program, we made a number of changes to try to keep our fellows as safe as possible. Fellows conducted virtual visits and were not required to be on campus for that. Most of our fellows who were in their research time were asked to work from home. Some laboratories closed temporarily.
The time that fellows were outside their normal clinical rotations was relatively brief – I’m thankful for that. We also have been lucky in Minnesota to not have as big a burden of sick patients as many other areas. We did not have to do anything like redeploy fellows to inpatient COVID units or have fellows do medical duties that were outside their scope of hematology/oncology training.
Dr. Majhail: In the spring, there were many unknowns about how medical education would look. We work in cancer centers and mostly with cancer patients, many of whom are immunocompromised or on active treatment. When the pandemic started, we did not know the full extent of how the virus would affect our patients.
We curtailed many of our services. Like many other institutions, we cut down a lot of the in-person visits and elective procedures for a period of time. And, obviously, we had to be more creative as we talked about how and what we did with our patients coming in. As we learned more about the virus, we gained a better sense of the prevalence of COVID-19 infections in the local community. We gradually opened things a bit more and [at the time this interview was conducted in August 2020] we are mostly back to business “as usual,†while following safety precautions.
Dr. Kahn: After being on the faculty at Tulane University for 25 years, I became Dean of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Medicine on April 1. I was a new dean at a new medical school. Yes, our students were converted to online education. And yes, our clinics were closed for a period. But we also set up the first curbside testing program – and first overall testing program – for the virus in the entire state of Nevada. We also set up the state’s first convalescent plasma program, which was up and running in 3.5 weeks.
The state of Nevada does not have a training program in hematology/oncology. Care is extremely fragmented. Right now, many Nevadans with cancer leave the state and go to Southern California or Utah for their care – we have to change that. So, when the pandemic hit, one of my messages as dean was to convey what an academic medical center could bring to the community. Between our curbside testing and convalescent plasma programs, we were able to articulate why this community needed a medical school.