NEWS | UPM OKs in-person classes for medical, allied health programs during midyear
By Emil Escudero and Ethan Galvan
With remote learning failing to compensate for the real world lessons earned through clinical practice and hospital exposure, the University of the Philippines Manila (UPM) officials are now pushing for the return of face-to-face classes during the Midyear term of Academic Year 2020–2021.
In separate virtual college town halls held between the administration and the undergraduate batches, University officials laid out their plans for the resumption of laboratory, clinical, and hospital duties of the students from the College of Medicine (CM), College of Dentistry (CD), College of Nursing (CN), and College of Pharmacy (CP) whose rotations were suspended at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the heightened risk of contracting infection.
Status of the decision
In the said meetings, it was revealed that the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) already approved the University’s application for a return to limited face-to-face classes for students of the medical and allied health sciences. According to Dr. Antolin Serraon, Chair of the Department of Clinical Dental Health Sciences, the go-signal from CHED is just the first step in finalizing the universities plans for face-to-face classes as they are still awaiting the approval of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF).
Yet, prior to this decision, face-to-face rotations for the CM interns and clerks in PGH already began on November 26, 2020 and January 18, 2021 respectively, with all being RT-PCR tested for free before in-person hospital duties resumed.
In contrast, for the CD, CN, and CP, the administration mentioned that before face-to-face classes resume, students would be asked to answer a survey aimed at gauging the number of enrollees to better manage the scheduling of classes during the Midyear.
The IATF, in coordination with CHED, are the main agencies responsible for gauging whether universities and colleges have met the necessary requirements for in-person rotations to resume.
Preparations by the colleges
Originally scheduled for the second semester, University officials said that it was postponed to the Midyear to make time for retrofitting facilities, training personnel, procuring Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), and ironing out protocols to assure students’ health and well-being.
In terms of the preparedness of facilities in the UPCD, Sandra Batua, Dentistry Student Council (DSC) Chairperson, said that the laboratories are ready to receive students while the clinics, where resident clinicians treat outside patients, only began being retrofitted weeks ago.
Moreover, according to Batua, the delay in the retrofitting of the College’s facilities resulted from the failure of College officials and PGH management to reach a consensus on the scope of the Bayanihan to Heal As One Act 1 prior to its expiration on June 24, 2020.
The said law sought to fast track the procurement of supplies and services for the pandemic by bypassing public bidding usually conducted for government contracts.
There is also on-going retrofitting in the CP right now but whether it is for the preparation for the implementation of the face-to-face classes is uncertain. Meanwhile, CN’s postponement of face-to-face classes had been welcomed by the Nursing Student Council (NSC) as it would give more time to finish engineering work, create vaccination plans, and procure PPE.
Implementation of health and safety protocols
To limit community transmission, University officials stated that there would be a triage area prior to entering the campus wherein foot-traffic would be strictly one-way. To aid in this effort, an application named Bayanihan Na! Employee Symptoms Tracking System (BESTS) would be tapped to monitor the health status of students, faculty, and employees.
The CM students are required to accomplish a health declaration form daily which checks the temperature, symptoms and exposure checks. There are also assigned students per block who will check their classmates daily for symptoms.
Moreover, the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) already disseminated an algorithm which students should follow in case they experience any symptoms of COVID-19 and when they think that they had significant exposure to people who are COVID-positive.
Hence, students would be tested only as deemed appropriate if they are suspected to have COVID-19 based on symptoms or possible exposure to the virus from COVID-positive patients, and not be tested on a regular interval.
On the other hand, the CP students with a thesis that requires laboratory use are the only ones who will possibly have face-to-face meetings, however, there are no concrete details yet regarding the implementation of this set-up. The number of people inside the laboratories will be limited to maintain the physical distance of each thesis group that is composed of three students. They will also be required to wear personal protective equipment (PPE’s) aside from their laboratory attires.
For all colleges, lectures will continue to be conducted virtually while laboratories would only be operating at 50% of their original capacity. Additionally, the student load for the second semester will be capped at 12 units while the Maximum Residency Rule (MRR) would remain suspended
Woes of distance learning set-up
With the core of all the aforementioned programs relying on bridging theoretical knowledge with hands-on experience to hone one’s clinical eye in treating diseases, several concerns regarding the proper implementation of limited face-to-face classes were considered.
For one, the issue of student load for dental clinicians was discussed as the clinical conference and practice subjects (Dent 171/172) would only be 10 units-less than the university limit of 12. This raised concerns among CD students as it may result in some becoming underload, further affecting their respective individual scholarships and college transcripts.
In addition, learning equity issues would also arise as the clinician batches (4th-6th years) who fall under the old curriculum are required to take up theoretical subjects first before treating live patients in the clinics. To temporarily address this, Dr. Serraon said that students would be encouraged to take up additional units during their summer semesters. Nevertheless, no formal action yet is pursued.
Despite these gaps in preparation, according to Aaron Tuazon, a 6th-year Senior Clinician, he remained hopeful that sound protocols and engineering controls would be implemented in the CD to allow clinicians to finally move forward with their pending clinical cases and requirements.
However, Tuazon also mentioned the academic costs to graduating clinicians and residents from the College as the pandemic has resulted in no clinicians from Batch 2020–2022 graduating on-time; leading to further delays when in-person clinics finally resume.
On the other hand, Reginne dela Peña, Vice-Chairperson of the NSC, lauded CN’s efforts to facilitate clinical rotations as she believed that delivering heavily skills-dependent courses such as Nursing in an online setting would not only impose a strain on the student body but also compromise learning as a whole.
