COVID-19 Response

Project ECHO: COVID-19

Update and Infection Prevention and Control Methods

Presenter: Paul Carson, M.D.

Login required. Contact Julie Reiten for assistance.

Project ECHO: COVID-19

Provider Well-Being During COVID-19

Presenter: Andrew McLean, M.D.

Login required. Contact Julie Reiten for assistance.

Due to the current COVID-19 outbreak, the Deeded Body Program will be implementing a temporary hold on accepting whole body donors effective March 30 until further notice.

To be clear, the Deeded Body Program remains operational and is still accepting Certificates for Bequeathing Body forms from prospective donors who wish to register for future acceptance.

Donors currently residing in the School of Medicine & Health Sciences Deeded Body Program will continue to be respectfully cared for as integral elements of our program and teaching mission.

We appreciate any disappointment that is experienced by the families of donors who cannot be accepted into the Deeded Body Program during this unprecedented difficult time. We sympathize with them and extend our services to help with any questions in navigating alternative arrangements for their loved ones. We may be contacted at 701.777.2101.

We plan to resume accepting donors in the UND SMHS Deeded Body Program in the future. Thank you for your understanding and patience until we return to normal operation of the UND SMHS Deeded Body Program.

Resources for faculty who are teaching online:

• Going Online in a Hurry (Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Basic Teaching Strategies and Their Online Translations
• Instructional Design
• Teaching & Learning Resource Repository

Contact the UND Teaching, Transformation and Development Academy (TTaDA) for assistance with:

• Blackboard
• Yuja and VoiceThread
• ProctorU

Information Resources has compiled a variety of Remote Access options to help faculty, staff and students during this time. Information Resources can also help with questions regarding Mediasite and Sharepoint.

Library Resources has compiled a research guide with information pertinent to the COVID-19 pandemic. This page includes information about the ways in which librarians can supplement your online courses, as well as links to information made free by a variety of scholarly publishers and information to help keep you healthy as you transition to a new work environment.

Do you have a question? Please Ask a Librarian!

Consistent with University guidance for University staff, Program Directors will inform residents/fellows about their expectations in the event that residents/fellows experience illness including:

1. If residents/fellows feel sick, they should notify their immediate supervisor and Program Director and go home.
2. Residents/Fellows should not try to “tough it out” and continue working if feeling ill.
3. Instead of taking leave, the preference is for residents/fellows to work from home such as studying for an in-service exam or board certification, research, etc.; however, work from home is at the discretion of the Program Director and resident/fellow.

Questions or concerns should be referred to Kim Becker.

Resident and Fellow Away Rotations

Resident travel out of state for away rotations is not allowed at this time. 

If there are strong programmatic reasons why such as rotation is considered essential, we can assess those requests individually. Requests should be sent to the DIO, Kim Becker, who will consult with key leaders. 

For anyone who is interested, Dr. Andrew McLean, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, adapted a presentation called Resilience to address COVID. 

Imaging Core

The Imaging Core is instituting the following new policies designed to minimize person-to-person contact and to maintain a safe environment for users and staff. If you have questions, please contact either Sarah Abrahamson or Bryon Grove.

1. Training of new users is being curtailed until activity on the UND campus returns to normal. As an alternative, those individuals who need microscopy data for their research will be able to submit samples to Sarah Abrahamson and have the core staff collect the images for them. Please contact Sarah Abrahamson or Dr. Grove to make arrangements.
2. For trained users who have straightforward microscopy work to do, we strongly recommend that they also arrange to have core staff collect their microscopy data. Again please contact Sarah Abrahamson or Dr. Grove to make these arrangements.
3. If trained core users have complex microscopy work that requires them to use the equipment, they must contact Sarah Abrahamson or Dr. Grove beforehand so that we can ensure that they are aware of the safety and decontamination procedures we have put in place. Users will be required to wear gloves, provided by the core facility, when handling the microscopy equipment and they must notify core facility staff when they are done so that the equipment can be decontaminated.

Please note that a remote session utilizing Zoom is a viable option for most of our equipment. Users will be able to see both the staff member and the equipment screen, which will allow them to guide the staff member during image collection.

Genomics Core

The Genomics Core facility will remain open for business for new and ongoing projects. However, it is taking steps to minimize person-to-person contact and to maintain a safe environment for users and staff. 

1. Until further notice, it is not allowing any personal sample drop-off to core labs. All samples need to be submitted in the drop-off freezer. In case you are not familiar with the location of the drop-off freezer, feel free to email Core Director Bony DeKumar for directions. 
2. All one-on-one and group meetings to discuss data analysis and project discussion will be scheduled through Zoom.  
3. Please email queries about a letter of support, budget and technical questions for a grant proposal or any other questions to Bony DeKumar.

It is possible that some services may be delayed due to logistics of ordering and shipping reagents and samples. We are making every effort to eliminate any negative impacts of the current situation and we are looking forward to helping everyone maintain their research productivity. 

Effective March 17, in response to the strong recommendations of the Association of American Medical Colleges, in concern for student safety and in order to help health care systems maintain supplies of personal protective equipment for needed care, we will be pulling all SMHS students from their clinical environments through the end of March. We will make an exception if a student is fulfilling a critical and irreplaceable role within a health care team, as defined by that health care system and if that student is willing to continue in that role. Course directors will be contacting students with alternate work assignments to fulfill course objectives.

First-Year Students

1. Basic science lectures: PowerPoints, handouts and links to Mediasite recordings will be available through your Block 4 Blackboard site.
2. Neuroscience laboratories: PowerPoints and an instruction manual/guide will be available through the Block 4 Blackboard site.
3. Gross anatomy laboratories: The Block 4 gross anatomy guide and content specific to each gross anatomy laboratory will be posted on the Block 4 Blackboard site. Practical experiences for the three scheduled gross anatomy laboratory sessions will be postponed until later in the block.
4. PCL: All PCL sessions will be conducted by Zoom video communication.
5. Clinical science lectures: Mediasite recordings of clinical science lectures will be available through your Block 4 Blackboard site.
6. Simulations: Video links for the simulations will be made available on Blackboard along with instructions for related activities.
7. Complete core examinations on standardized patients: Will be re-scheduled.
8. Small group bioethics discussion on End of Life Care and the Faculty Panel on Physician’s experiences with death and dying: Will be re-scheduled.
9. SIMPLE: Physician depression and suicide: Will be re-scheduled.

Second-Year Students

1. Week 1 of Block 8 will start Monday, March 16, 2020 at 8am. All instruction will be conducted through remote delivery as described below. All mandatory sessions will require remote involvement for the entire session.
2. Lectures: PowerPoints, handouts and links to Mediasite recordings will be available through your Block 8 Blackboard site.
3. TBL: All TBL sessions will be conducted by Zoom video communication.
4. Intro to Block 8, Intro to SHaPE, standard precautions, Opioid Use/Abuse panel Bootcamp sessions: Mediasite recordings will be available through your Block 8 Blackboard site.
5. Block 8 Clinical Skills Exam – H&Ps on standardized patients: Will be rescheduled.
6. PPE and surgical scrub, airway management, Foley lab, IV/IO skills, NG tube insertion Bootcamp sessions will be rescheduled.
7. Interprofessional simulations: Mediasite recordings will be available through your Block 8 Blackboard site along with instructions for related activities.
8. Dermatology laboratories: Will be rescheduled.
9. SIMPLE: physician depression and suicide: Will be rescheduled.

Third-Year Students

With the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, medical students will not return to the wards at this time and will continue to participate in their education virtually. This will allow us to continue to preserve PPE in this time of shortage as well as allow you to continue to complete your medical education with the goal of graduation on time for your class.

If you are participating in ROME or MILE, you will receive individual details about your educational plan going forward from these programs directly. 

For students participating in the traditional clerkship model, you will complete Rotation 5 online as you have been the past two weeks. We are planning for shelf exams to be given on time and are awaiting further guidance from NBME in the coming weeks to know the exact plans for test proctoring and will communicate as soon as that information is available. You will receive full credit for these clerkships as long as you have participated in all clinical activities prior to being off the wards and all online assignments required by your clerkship faculty since then.  

Anticipating that the situation may remain the same as we begin Rotation 6, you will be able to complete the first four weeks of the rotation online with virtual curriculum from the department.  If you were scheduled to begin Rotation 6 with neurology, you will begin with psychiatry instead. Neurology cannot be completed virtually due to the short clerkship length.  If students are unable to return to the wards by the end of these four weeks, an incomplete grade will be filed for the clerkship. You will then be enrolled in an elective and complete the last four clinical weeks of your clerkship at a time in your fourth year when students are able to return to clinical sites. After completion of the clinical four weeks, the incomplete grade will be changed to the final clerkship grade.

Alternatively, if you would prefer not to complete the first four weeks of your assigned clerkship virtually, you will have the option of taking two elective periods rather than one and completing the full clerkship in traditional format once students are able to return to clinical sites.

We will send the preliminary list of virtual elective choices directly to students as soon as the information is gathered next week.

Please send any questions or concerns to Susan Zelewski or your campus dean.

Fourth-Year Students

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, medical students will continue to participate in education in a virtual format for the Period 11 elective. This will allow us to continue to preserve PPE as well as complete your fourth-year education on time. If you had an elective scheduled for Period 11, you will receive a list of available online electives to choose from to fill this requirement.

These electives will be graded with satisfactory/unsatisfactory only due to the change in educational method. You will have no scheduling limits on this final elective (you can choose anything from the list regardless of what you have taken previously). 

The scheduling will be done centrally from the Northeast Campus office similar to how you signed up from your required AI. Susan Zelewski will be sending you the course descriptions and preference form as soon as all the information has been gathered. 

Please contact Dr. Zelewski or your campus dean with any questions or concerns.

Student Interest Groups

Per the remote learning environment in place and Dr. Carr’s email on March 18, 2020, all in-person student group meetings are canceled. The Office of Student Affairs & Admissions can assist in setting up Zoom meetings.

The building is locked, but current building occupants can access the building with EDA keycards. Each office/department should post a sign noting they are open but staff are working remotely, and include contact information for staff. UND has provided a sample sign.

Coming to the SMHS should be done on an as needed basis only, given the directive to work and learn remotely. Students are permitted to come into the building to clean out their lockers if they do so quickly.

UND Campus Postal Services will still be dropping off and picking up mail at the SMHS mail room using their M-F normal schedule. The only exception will be that the last mail/package pickup at the SMHS will occur at 4 p.m. M-F.

All package deliveries (i.e. FedEx, UPS, Spee-Dee Delivery, etc.) will be made to UND Campus Postal Services at Central Receiving, Room 145, 3701 Campus Rd, Stop 9053. Then each day M-F between 10:30 a.m. and noon, the UND Safety Office staff will deliver these packages to our second floor mail room. Any packages that are listed as needing refrigeration, hazardous or flammable will delivered to the faculty member’s office or lab.

Please have someone from your department check your mail in the second floor mail room on a regular basis. Consider reviewing any checks that you receive and ask providers if they can use electronic fund transfers, minimizing our mail in this important area. The Office of Administration & Finance can assist with this if needed.

Also, the hallway door to the E228 mail room will be closed but not locked (if it does end up locked, your classroom/conference room keys will open this door). Please close the door when you exit the mail room, but do not lock it.

Questions about mail can be directed to Darin Lee at UND Campus Postal Services, 701.777.4832.

Altru will no longer deliver mail to and from the School while the building is locked. All mail to and from Altru should be routed through the U.S. Postal Service.

From UND Parking:

From May 31 to July 31, an active UND parking permit will no longer be needed to park on campus. However, Parking Services will continue to enforce safety issues with a focus on ADA, reserved, service/maintenance vehicle, and loading/timed spaces.

The Parking office will remain open Monday through Friday, with limited staffing from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Customers are encouraged to call or email with questions, concerns or transactions that they have before coming to the office as all building doors are locked. If needed, we can set up a convenient time to meet.

Parking Services
701.777.3551
parking@UND.edu

All Spring and Summer Commencement ceremonies are canceled. Eligible graduates for General, Law and Medicine ceremonies are invited to participate at a later Commencement. The University also intends to work with students on alternative ways to celebrate their graduation achievements while maintaining social distancing. Virtual ceremonies have been posted for the spring semester.

This bill had two intents: 1) to target dollars to students who are most at risk financially, so they used the number of Pell grant recipients to determine what dollars went where, and 2) since one of the challenges in many institutions was the shift to online education, they targeted the dollars to the institutions that had to make more of a shift to online. UND was doing more online instruction than NDSU. The percentage according to the federal government was 26% at UND purely online and only 11% at NDSU. Thus NDUS received more CARES funding.

The CARES Act Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund-IHE/Student Aid provides funding to institutions to provide emergency financial aid grants to students. Furthermore, institutions have the responsibility of determining how grants will be distributed to students and how the amount of each student grant is calculated. As stated above, institutions are responsible for determining awards; UND main campus financial aid awarded emergency grant funding to undergraduate students. Medical (and graduate/law) students were not awarded emergency grants.

Absolutely! We’ve focused on virtual care in the past, but we can do more. Dr. Wynne invites all faculty to design curricula for all students that helps better prepare them for these public health threats.

No one really knows for sure. Online instruction will continue through the spring and summer semesters. Dr. Wynne has been invited to serve on a Chancellor’s Special Panel to discuss how universities such as UND might adapt to a new norm and what we’ll do this fall semester. We’re hoping an antibody test will be available to tell us who might have already had the virus and who is safe to return to the office/classroom.

The concern is that, as in the 1918 Influenza pandemic, COVID may return in the fall and winter. Dr. Wynne anticipates recurrent waves where we go from lessening to much more aggressive physical distancing as we are today. This could last for the next year or two. So while there may be more interaction when we return, there may not be handshakes. People may be wearing masks. Students may sit in classrooms six feet apart, or remain online except some clinical, lab and simulation experiences. Those experiences are tough to develop online alternatives that are as good. So it may be some online and some in person.

It’s not official, but it would be a reasonable assumption that faculty and staff will only be allowed to return to the office when we return to traditional classroom learning. So, as with online education, officially through the spring and summer semesters, and possibly at the start of the fall semester.

This is one of the most difficult questions to answer at this point. The decision up until now has been between Dr. Wynne, on behalf of UND and the School, and the major health systems that we work with. They told us for safety reasons that they didn’t want to have our trainees in their environment at this time.

For medical students, we have also gotten suggestions from the AAMC. They just now extended their suggestion that students stay out of the clinic until the end of April. Because of the shortage of PPE around the country, the institutions are concerned about putting students potentially in harm’s way. Students are usually restricted from care of COVID patients, but even in a hospital environment, the risk of infection is much higher. First, the institutions have to let our students back. Then we’ll have to agree that we’re comfortable with that.

UND has implemented a hiring "chill" at this time, meaning hires are not prohibited but must be justified as necessary at this time.

No. The learning objectives, content and credits earned (where applicable) remain the same, and is no cheaper to deliver online.

There are many funding sources being considered for reimbursement of some COVID expenses. The School will report these expenses to the State Board of Higher Education and the state Legislature. While the end result is uncertain at this time, it's easier to keep track now than to have to go back and calculate later.