• Lina Vogt, Michelle Schmidt, Martin Klasen, Johannes Bickenbach, Gernot Marx, and Saša Sopka.
• Klinik für Anästhesiologie, Uniklinik RWTH Aachen, Medizinische Fakultät, RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Deutschland. lvogt@ukaachen.de.
• Anaesthesist. 2022 Jan 1; 71 (1): 21-29.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic posed enormous challenges to the German healthcare system and highlighted the need for strategies to recruit, train, and deploy medical personnel. Until now, no holistic concept existed to use medical students as support for professionals in intensive care units (ICU) to avoid staff shortages in medical care.MethodIn a large-scale pilot project 265 medical students were trained for an ICU assignment. The innovative training module was accompanied by a pre-post questionnaire for self-assessment of the skills learned. 22 weeks after the training module and still during the pandemic deployment, another questionnaire was used to evaluate experiences in deployment and the efficiency of the training module with respect to preparation for ICU deployment.ResultsThe analysis revealed significant mean differences for all COVID-19-specific variables (safety dimension) in favor of the training module (n = 168). The deployment evaluation showed that the training concept was inconsistently assessed as preparation for the work deployment for 69 of the 89 deployed students in total (53% agreement/47% disagreement).ConclusionThe results show a good feasibility of an innovative training concept for medical students with respect to a pandemic deployment as assistants in intensive care units. The concept is suitable for providing additional helpers in intensive care units during a pandemic; however, the inconsistent evaluation indicates that the concept can be expanded and needs to be adapted.© 2021. The Author(s).

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