Emergency supply drive for front line COVID-19 workers
Dermatology World Weekly talked to Ronda Farah, MD, assistant professor in the department of dermatology at the University of Minnesota Medical School, about her efforts to collect emergency supplies for front line workers.
DW Weekly: Several weeks ago, it became apparent to you that PPE shortages would be a problem in your area for front line workers. Tell me about that.
Dr. Farah: A few weeks ago, at the beginning of March I was on social media and was seeing that doctors on the front lines in the emergency rooms were posting concerns that their hospital systems wouldn’t have enough personal protective equipment. Doctors and nurses at other hospital systems were reporting that the PPE had even been stolen. People were anxious about working and protecting themselves, their families, and their patients.
DW Weekly: You began asking businesses outside of medicine for masks. Tell me about that – how did you get started and where did you start?
Dr. Farah: I was wondering how I could contribute to this and as I was watching the national and daily briefings on the news a thought occurred to me: I just built a new house in 2015. I wonder if my builder has any extra n95s. I picked up the phone and called the builder who built my house and he said he had some extra masks. I asked him if he knew anyone else who had masks and he recommended the dry wall companies. This was at the point where the construction industry was encouraged to donate their supplies, but it wasn’t mandatory. I drove around and asked a couple of other painting and construction businesses and several places had supplies they could offer. At that point, I had about 60 n95 masks in my car.
DW Weekly: I understand that your supply drive has exploded statewide among medical students. How did you get the word out?
Dr. Farah: I was talking to one of my medical students and I was thinking out loud that I bet that there’s a bunch of PPE just sitting in the city, literally in people’s garages. At this point there were no supply drives being set up. My student, James Pathoulus, a third-year medical student mentee, suggested that all the medical students could do this. Their in-person rotations had been cancelled for safety reasons. I was uneasy about it at first because I thought it would be really hard to get a whole medical school on board to do something this large scale quickly. However, James inspired me to seek approval from our University to mobilize medical students from across our system to get involved. It was very exciting. We submitted a grant asking the medical school if they would support PPE collection with medical students and Dean Robert Englands, associate dean for undergraduate medical education at the University of Minnesota Medical School rapidly cleared them for participation. Then, our Assistant Dean of Curriculum. Dr. Ann Periera, was able to help us create a formal course for medical students to receive credit for innovative COVID-19-related projects. All of a sudden, it went from me calling my builder, to medical students calling businesses such as construction, drywall, painting, nail salons, tattoo parlors, food businesses, dental clinics, and veterinarians. Finally, to a medical student course in a matter of days.
DW Weekly: How many donations of supplies have you generated thus far?
Dr. Farah: We are actively tracking our donation via an IRB-exempt study to track where the supplies were coming from, what the supplies were and how much was received. We have just submitted this data to the statistician. However, within the first few days we had up to 60 dropoffs to our first donation location. We developed a survey working with MHealth (the University of Minnesota Health). We are hoping that for future pandemics this will help Minnesota health care systems to immediately identify where in the community the PPE may be and in what amounts. We are also hoping that this course could be an example of how medical student efforts can be utilized during a pandemic.
DW Weekly: What’s happening now regarding medical student involvement?
Dr. Farah: Now we are pivoting from PPE collections. We have a lot of businesses that are volunteering who do 3D printing and who want to create supplies to help. Now instead of doing a lot of calling, we’re trying to connect businesses that want to create something to the clinical side of things to fill a supply shortage. The dean of our medical school also decided that the students can get credit for this, so we developed the COVID-19 Crises Innovation Lab course for medical students. The student enrolls in the course for two or four weeks and they either develop or hop on to an innovative COVID-19 project that was designed by a medical student. It is exciting and inspiring. These students all have brilliant ideas to contribute to the COVID-19 response in our community. For example, this week I learned that a few students are developing patient materials on how to donate blood during COVID-19. Another project is an artistic endeavor explaining the plague and the history of pandemics. I have another student who has seen a shortage in COVID-19-related materials that are translated into Chinese. She has a lot of contacts in the Chinese community, so she is going to work on helping us with this regard. We have a student working on a photography project documenting COVID-19. We have students studying telemedicine and how that affects cancer patients. We have students focused on creating telemedicine handouts for dermatology patients. There are so many amazing projects from these brilliant individuals it is very hard to put into words. This program allows the students to contribute to the community during the pandemic in their own innovative way and to be empowered to help. We are trying to harness their brilliance. They are a key part of the health care team.
DW Weekly: What are your thoughts on collaboration among physicians during this time?
Dr. Farah: I want other doctors to know that dermatologists are here to help limit the number of skin issues going into the ER and urgent cares. Also, we have backs’ of front line health care workers in a different way. Just because we’re not ER doctors doesn’t mean that we can’t help. We understand as physicians what is needed and we are here to support all the front line workers in our own way..
Ronda Farah, MD, serves as assistant professor in the department of dermatology at the University of Minnesota Medical School, the University of Minnesota Health Cosmetic Lead, and medical dermatologist and director of medical dermatology at University of Minnesota Health Maple Grove Specialty Clinics.
Are you on the front lines managing COVID-19 patients? Share your story with DWW. Email dweditor@aad.org.
