COVID-19 Pandemic
Rachel Balick
Grayson Layton was about to complete his first year at Mercer University College of Pharmacy in Atlanta when one day, he learned his education was about to change.
“We were in the middle of an APhA immunization training, which is a lab training,” Layton said. “We got an e-mail from our president at [Mercer’s main campus in] Macon, GA, that there would be some changes. Rumors started buzzing around that time.”
Later, on the way to the library, “my friends and I got an e-mail simultaneously that said we had a mandatory meeting that next Thursday to go over a process in which we would shift to online learning. That was when we really knew that something was awry.”
At that point, most of Mercer’s busy student pharmacists hadn’t grasped the seriousness of the threat to public health. “We knew that coronavirus existed, obviously, and we knew that it was a big deal,’” Layton said. “Even the professors kept insinuating that it’s very unlikely that we were going to shift to an online format, that we were just doing this to prepare in the worst-case scenario for later in the semester or summer classes or next semester. We had no idea it would come so quickly.”
Allison Hur, a P3 student at St. John’s University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences in Queens, NY, was similarly shocked at how swiftly everything changed. “In the first week of March, we were advised against nonessential travel and told that our school would be running ‘practice online’ classes on March 12 and 13,” she said. On March 9, she learned in a late-night e-mail that online instructions would begin immediately. “That’s when I realized the coronavirus outbreak was much more serious than I had thought.”
Hur keeps to her old morning routine before starting her day to get into school mode. “I couldn’t create a separate space to study outside of my bedroom, but getting myself ready physically as I normally would has helped me stay engaged for online learning.”
Layton prefers studying alone, but he misses group study sessions before a quiz or exam. “You learn from each other—things that maybe you didn’t catch on to before,” he said. “The comfort of knowing that there are other people who are like-minded and are going through the same thing—that’s what I miss most about not being on campus.”
Unlike Layton, Hur said she finds it very difficult to work from home. “While it’s convenient for me to be home all the time, it didn’t increase my productivity. I also never realized how much time I spend outside my house until I was restricted from going outside. It really made me appreciate the freedom that I took for granted.”
Life in the hottest zone in the country is drastically different. “It’s a lot quieter than usual. There is nobody in the streets, and I spend most of my time at home. Everyone is doing their part in social distancing,” she said.
That’s one side of the coin. “I’m working as a pharmacy intern at a hospital, and work has gotten a lot more chaotic. Our emergency department is flooded, our ICUs have been converted to COVID-19 units, and everyone is scared of catching the virus while working with patients,” Hur said.
What Hur will remember most about this time in her life is the kindness of those around her. “Even though it’s been an extremely stressful time, a lot of people have reached out to check in with me, offer me rides home from work, and help with getting by. Everyone is working hard and making sacrifices to overcome this together.”
The rapid and dramatic changes, not just in school but across the nation, are what Layton will remember most. “It seems like in the span of a weekend we went from a fully functioning economy and government and school system to being completely shut down,” he said. “But I think that the rate at which we just completely stopped and took a deep breath and said, ‘We have to take these precautions in order to help ourselves in the end,’ I think that’s the most remarkable thing.”
Hur has tremendous gratitude for pharmacists and other frontline workers. “It takes a lot of courage and sacrifice to show up and help our community. I don’t think many of us foresaw that we would be working in the middle of the pandemic when we were going through pharmacy school, but here we are.”
Scrambling
The announcement that the remainder of the semester at Long Island University (LIU) Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy in Brooklyn, NY, would be online came on March 5, during spring break. That meant faculty had a few days to plan for online learning using Zoom.
“Some faculty felt more comfortable recording their lectures and having them on an on-demand structure,” said Eva Berrios-Colon, PharmD, professor of pharmacy practice and director of community partnerships at LIU. “There was some disagreement on whether students would be able to ask questions in a more synchronous way. We’re about 80% live classes, and classes are held at their original meeting times.”
There were some big obstacles.
“We found that many students did not have access to wi-fi or did not have the type of device they needed to join online classes,” she said. “We had to really scramble to get college laptops to these students. One of our assistant deans identified internet providers offering free service to students for at least 60 days.”
Some students lived in very cramped conditions, and they didn’t necessarily have private areas to listen to lectures. “Some of them had children and family members at home trying to share a weak internet connection,” she said.
And that’s just the didactic portion.
Disruption
Berrios-Colon, as the director of cocurricular activities, does community outreach with students. She also coordinates most student volunteer opportunities at LIU.
“We didn’t want our students to expose to coronavirus the high-risk populations at senior centers or adult day-living facilities, so we abruptly stopped all planned outreach for the semester. That was tough. We had students who had been working on programs the whole year. We had one program on K2, synthetic marijuana, in a federal prison. We had to cancel that. We had outreach within shelter systems,” Berrios-Colon said. “It disrupted the whole flow of the year.”
Even before LIU shifted to online classes, some hospitals reached out to LIU to say student pharmacists were no longer allowed in the building.
“One of the biggest reasons was that they didn’t have enough personal protective equipment (PPE) at that point,” Berrios-Colon said. “As a college, we grappled with, ‘OK, you’re sending our students home. How about our faculty?’ Our faculty are still reporting to sites without students.”
The other angle was determining what length of rotations would be acceptable to the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, especially for students about to graduate. “We had 2 weeks left in the next-to-last rotation, and the experiential department was able to package that and conclude the experience, but handling rotation starting at the end of March was a question.”
Berrios-Colon said the experiential department did a great job working with students through the chaos. LIU shifted students who needed direct patient care experiences into hospitals that were still accepting students. “For students who needed electives, we were able to be more creative. We can administer some of them online or transition them to a research-focused experience.”
Berrios-Colon has given thought to how pharmacy programs could learn from the crisis.
“Teaching students about resilience is important. We have to look into covering pandemics to a greater extent, certainly, and emergency preparedness—ethical dilemmas that come up in a national emergency. We will address access to internet early. Nothing can be taken for granted,” she said.
She’s also put in perspective some of the challenges and stress on the plate of a pharmacy educator. “There were weeks when I felt so exhausted from meetings, teaching, research, and outreach, but now I miss doing all those things. I miss seeing my colleagues. I miss the students, and I especially miss working with the community.”