Early May marked a period of great uncertainty for many rising 3rd-year medical students at UMass. The COVID-19 pandemic ensured that a rapidly-evolving set of rules were being delineated on an almost-daily basis, leaving many students to refresh their Outlook inboxes at the same frequency as their reddit feeds. With STEP 1 exam cancellations, quarantine modifications, and clerkship start date changes happening at what could only be described as warp speed, life as it was once known had been completely upended.
So, when the email announcing that clerkship experiences were set to start on June 1st, weeks before many other programs around the country were planning on doing the same, students expressed apprehension, uncertainty, and confusion. Every reassurance was made that extensive measures had been taken to maximize safety, but many students could still not fathom the prospect of being in a hospital during the throes of a global pandemic. However, many expressed excitement at the prospect of continuing education, fervently exhausted by the severe cabin fever that quarantine had brought to daily life.
The revamped COVID-19 clerkship experience was, in many ways, as strange as one could imagine. For starters, medical students were not allowed to participate in the care of any COVID-positive patients, which was to be expected. What were once weekly roundtable case seminars had become zoom sessions, shelf examinations had become anxiety-inducers at home, and OSCEs had transformed living rooms into virtual clinics. Students were urged to socially distance as much as reasonably possible by zooming in to conferences, eating lunch separately from residents, and avoiding congregation in already-packed lounges. Most patient encounters were carried out with face shields, surgical masks, and gloves, making students resemble makeshift astronauts as they visited their bewildered patients.
Despite all of this, the freshly revised clerkships still carried many characteristics that kept them familiar. The amount of immersion that they provide is still second-to-none; no online module can simulate the experience of building a bond with a 7-year-old receiving chemotherapy for metastatic renal cancer, nor can any textbook adequately replicate real interviews with acutely psychotic patients. Even learning how to coordinate care between treatment teams at UMass and elsewhere is a vital skill best learned in-person. The very real experience of being admonished by a MGH Cardiologist on the risks and benefits of anticoagulation makes for a much more vivid lesson than those found in Anki decks. These conversations are essential components in the training of young doctors, and even during a pandemic their value makes them worth hazarding the risk.
For 3rd year medical students, this has become the new normal, and a life without masks, social distancing, and weekly nasal swabs has become unimaginable. Despite being mildly inconvenient, the numerous safety measures taken at UMass have ensured that clerkships remain safe overall. Moreover, clerkships have brought back a semblance of normalcy to a life that was once filled with uncertainty; they have given medical students the opportunity to continue their training in a feasible, immersive and rewarding manner.