• Laura Baecher-Lind, Angela C Fleming, Rashmi Bhargava, Susan M Cox, Elise N Everett, Scott C Graziano, Nadine T Katz, Shireen Madani Sims, Helen K Morgan, Christopher M Morosky, Tammy S Sonn, Jill M Sutton, Celeste S Royce, and Association of Professors of Gynecology and Obstetrics Undergraduate Medical Education Committee.
• Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts; Beaumont Hospital; the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine; Dell Medical School, Austin, Texas; Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont; Loyola University Medical Center, Hines, Illinois; Montefiore Medical Center-Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York; University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, Florida; the University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan; the University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut; the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri; the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center-Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts.
• Obstet Gynecol. 2020 Oct 1; 136 (4): 830-834.

AbstractAs hospitals and medical schools confronted coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), medical students were essentially restricted from all clinical work in an effort to prioritize their safety and the safety of others. One downstream effect of this decision was that students were designated as nonessential, in contrast to other members of health care teams. As we acclimate to our new clinical environment and medical students return to the frontlines of health care, we advocate for medical students to be reconsidered as physicians-in-training who bring valuable skills to patient care and to maintain their status as valued team members despite surges in COVID-19 or future pandemics. In addition to the contributions students provide to medical teams, they also serve to benefit from the formative experiences of caring for patients during a pandemic rather than being relegated to the sidelines. In this commentary, we discuss factors that led to students' being excluded from this pandemic despite being required at the bedside during prior U.S. public health crises this past century, and we review educational principles that support maintaining students in clinical environments during this and future pandemics.

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