Andrew Filak Jr., MD: All university graduations have been canceled. The university graduation scheduled for May 4 has been canceled. The College of Medicine is looking at alternatives for hooding ceremonies and is working with the graduate students at our college in addition to the university.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: If there was an opportunity – and this is just a possibility – that a residency would like to start a medical student early prior to their July 1 start date and the student voluntarily wants to do that – and appropriate licensure would work out – we might be able to consider getting some people to graduate early to start a little early. We would do that on a selective basis, but I am not sure that is even possible yet.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: Yes, there is always more that we can do. We are relying on faculty and staff to come up with ideas as to how you can help work with us to improve this process and to work on projects. As Dr. Brett Kissela said, we have a lot of people working on research activities. Our patient care providers are actively working on teams to deal with the pandemic and the surge. On education, we are trying to fill in the gaps to utilize the time productively when the students were supposed to be on clinical rotations. We are open to ideas and suggestions.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: The summer research institute will not be allowed to occur on campus this summer. That is the current UC policy.

George Smulian, MD: The role for surgical masks or cloth and handmade masks is as a source control to prevent the wearer from spreading organisms to other individuals. As we realized that asymptomatic carriage happens (the frequency we still don’t know because of limited testing), the role of masks is to protect others. It plays only a partial role of protecting you as the wearer in that mucosal surfaces, eyes, etc., still are portals of entry. The reason there are now recommendations by the Surgeon General for universal mask use wherever possible, is that the more we wear masks as a source control, the more we prevent exposure to others. It certainly is a reasonable recommendation. Distancing is still an important consideration.

Philip Diller, MD, PhD: Innovation is really part of our response. One of the things that has happened in quick response for the M3 clerkship is that Dr. LeAnn Coberly in Internal Medicine has put together a series of cases that has been made available to students. It’s very well done and we have been very impressed with it. We have an example of a small pilot of using telehealth for inpatient consults that Dr. John Quinlan is doing. That’s novel and new. I think what we’re going to find is that during this time both students as well as faculty step up and create based on need. We will have new innovations that will come out of this that will change our educational program into the future and we will take that best of what the opportunity provides.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: As of this time the university is on all remote learning through the summer semester. If possible, we may allow some students back in labs over the summer, but the planning for right now is that we will not have summer M1 research opportunities on campus. Unfortunately, that is where we stand at the moment and where we need to plan.

George Smulian, MD: The virus is liberated from fabric with soap and water so therefore these masks can be washed and safely washed in combination with the rest of your laundry, as long as you use detergent. There is no risk associated with that and they safely can be used on multiple occasions under those circumstances. Health care workers regard hand-sewn masks as a last resort. They are certainly better than nothing. But the only study that I have found that addresses the efficacy of these masks was done in 2012 looking at flu transmission and showed that most of the handsewn masks – regardless of whether they were made from cotton, T-shirt material, silk , linen, and a variety of other things – had a filtering efficiency of between 30% and 50% of a surgical mask. Certainly not ideal, but certainly better than nothing.

George Smulian, MD: Uniform wearing of masks for all health care workers is something we are moving to as quickly as we can. I would like to emphasis that just a surgical mask does not provide adequate protection so we are trying to implement in patient care encounters that everyone wears a universal face shield in addition to a face mask because that is protecting the health care provider to the optimal capacity. We should be implementing this process in the next couple of days.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: Dr. Myles Pensak has been leading this effort in getting resources and materials out to people. Dr. Jen Milano and her team and the Wellness Committee have been working on this. Our Department of Psychiatry under Dr. Melissa DelBello has put some things together and has resources available for people. Some of the things being considered is the possibly of virtual group sessions with some of the trained psychologists and psychiatrists to talk about burnout prevention and issues that could occur after we have gone through the surge if we have a lot of difficult issues to deal with. We are very sensitive to this and this is an area we are focusing on.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: Those are likely to not be feasible at this time based on university policy. We will bring this up again with the UC Public Health Response Team. Right now, throughout the university the summer activities are closed. If labs open, we might be able to put some students back into those labs but the researchers will have to ramp up. We also will have to focus on the degree-receiving students also in the labs

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: Right now, we have it as indefinite. It will be at least until May 1 because that is date the Governor’s office has currently set. It will depend on the surge and what is going on in the community. If the surge does not start until late April or early May, we can see significant extensions of this.

Andrew Filak Jr., MD: We will have to work with Cincinnati Children’s to coordinate that. There may be some opportunities there where people are allowed in Children’s labs. Children’s has been a great partner.

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