COVID-19 Pandemic Leaves Trail of Lessons in Medical, Education Arenas
Wed, 07/05/2023 - 09:00am | By: Van Arnold
The devastating COVID-19 pandemic claimed lives, destroyed businesses, displaced workers, strained healthcare professionals, and created unparalleled chaos across the globe.
In the words of Dr. Jeffrey Williams, Assistant Medical Director at The University of Southern Mississippi’s (USM) Moffitt Health Center, “that was a brutal grind.”
As of June 1, 2023, figures provided by the World Health Organization show that nearly 6.9 million people worldwide had perished due to the COVID-19 virus, with approximately 1.1 million of those deaths occurring in the United States. After three paralyzing years, President Joe Biden lifted the federal declaration of a public health emergency in May.
When the initial COVID-19 cases emerged in early 2020, Williams was serving as a pediatrician at Hattiesburg Clinic. He joined the medical staff at Moffitt Health Center in 2021. Recalling his time on the pandemic’s front lines of medical care, Williams acknowledges the relentless pressure COVID-19 created.
“Early on, it was stressful working with little information and very few personal protective equipment supplies,” said Williams, a practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years who also served in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. “This entire community stepped up to help. USM helped supply testing kits, local businesses donated what supplies they had, some supplied food to workers at the COVID clinic. Many local people started making and donating masks. It was an amazing community response.”
Added Williams: “On the other hand, as the medical community dug in our collective heals to weather this storm, few of us realized just how much stress we were under. Over time it became obvious in the faces of my colleagues, especially those in critical care, the devastating toll that death after death, day after day, was taking.”
On Dec. 31, 2019, China announced the discovery of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. The first American case was reported on Jan. 20, and President Donald Trump declared the U.S. outbreak a public health emergency on Jan. 31. The first known American deaths occurred in February. On March 6, 2020, Trump allocated $8.3 billion to fight the outbreak and declared a national emergency on March 13.
USM reported its first positive COVID-19 case in May 2020. Between that time and December 2022, Moffitt Health Center saw just shy of 1,400 confirmed positive cases. During that same period, the clinic’s lab processed between 9,200-9,300 COVID tests in- house. Between January 2023 and June 2023, the clinic had tested 66 patients for COVID-19, with only one of those testing positive.
Dr. Melissa Roberts, Executive Director, Student Health Services at USM, praises the Moffitt Health Center team for meeting the challenges of COVID-19 head-on.
“Certainly, there are always things that I think we could have done better during the pandemic, but overall I feel that the staff at Moffitt Health Center continued to provide exceptional care during one of the most difficult times in modern medicine,” said Roberts. “The periods of COVID case surges during the pandemic were physically and emotionally exhausting for the medical staff, but I am thankful and appreciative for how well the staff responded during those difficult times.”
Dr. Lachel Story, Dean of USM’s College of Nursing and Health Professions, looks back with admiration as she remembers how valiantly healthcare workers and educators confronted the deadly virus.
“While there are still some residual challenges and the world forever changed due to the pandemic, I stand in awe thinking about what we achieved in healthcare and education,” said Story. “We were and continue to be innovative in meeting these challenges. The disruption in all aspects of work and life created the need and space to explore ways to do thing that may not have necessarily fit the traditional ideal. Some things were better and some things confirmed those traditional ways. We also re-evaluated what was really important, including our priorities – professionally and personally. We are still working to adjust the workplace to meet those new priorities of employees.”
The pandemic forced most universities, including USM, to suspend in-person classes for the spring 2020 semester. Many members of the faculty and staff began working remotely from home or took paid administrative leave. Entire athletic seasons were cancelled as well as numerous arts events.
Students returned to the Hattiesburg and Gulf Park campuses for the fall 2020 semester with modified curriculums and strict COVID-19 guidelines. Story notes that COVID-19-related content has since been included into the College of Nursing and Health Professions curriculum.
One significant byproduct of the pandemic has been the implementation of an Accelerated BSN pathway at USM’s Gulf Park campus in Long Beach. This option, introduced in January 2023, was developed to more efficiently meet the workforce needs in South Mississippi.
“This pathway allows students who have earned bachelor’s degrees in other fields to fast-track through the nursing curriculum in 12 months,” said Story. “These students meet the same accreditation requirements, have the same number of clinical hours, and the same degree as our traditionally delivered BSN program.”
Perhaps, no aspect of the pandemic had a more polarizing effect than the vaccine debate. COVID-19 vaccinesbecame available in December 2020, under emergency use, beginning the national vaccination program, with the first vaccine officially approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on August 23, 2021.
While Williams commends the efforts by local and state health officials to keep Mississippians apprised of COVID-19 statistic, he calls the damage inflicted to the national response by “politician doctors and politician scientists” incalculable.
“Agenda driven medicine, where scientific debate is suppressed and disagreement is punished, is dangerous,” he said. “Making everything political has led to a serious distrust of organized medicine and put a strain on the doctor-patient relationship. As an example, vaccine acceptance for many people became more about political affiliation than science.”
Williams acknowledges the many lessons yielded by the protracted pandemic, with a major one being that community coalitions are critical.
“The federal and state governments were justifiably overwhelmed, and local communities did not have time to wait,” he said. “The ability to ramp up manufacturing of crucial supplies should be a national security imperative. Relying on overseas manufacturing, when critical transportation infrastructure is compromised, is a recipe for disaster.”
In 2021 alone, an estimated 333,942 healthcare providers left their jobs, many for pandemic-related causes such as burnout, long hours, heavy patient loads, and personal health concerns, according to a report by the commercial intelligence company Definitive Healthcare. Also, many workers retired.
And yet, hundreds of thousands stayed the course. Story points out that nurses and other health professionals understand how to respond to emergencies, whether at the patient’s bedside or in academia. However, those emergencies are usually short-lived. Healthcare professionals faced a crisis so enormous that no amount of preparation or training could have sufficed. Story applauds those who withstood the extensive toll COVID-19 took.
“While many left the profession and will hopefully return, many stayed, and that speaks to their sense of duty and commitment to the health of the people in their communities,” said Story. “They stayed despite the risk to them and their families. They stayed despite losing their patients and colleagues to the pandemic. We owe them a great debt for their service and sacrifice.”
Out of great despair and sorrow generated by a pandemic of astronomical proportions, Story sees hope and optimism.
“We sincerely need this next generation of healthcare professionals, with their unique perspective shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic and other events,” she said. “We are in a real position to shape healthcare for a better future like never before.”
When Roberts reflects on the grueling and often-unpredictable effects from the pandemic, two important words come to mind: fear and courage.
“I’ve never experienced the escalating apprehension within the healthcare community which occurred during the COVID surges of the pandemic,” she said. “I’ve also never witnessed such courage and innovation from medical staff around the world in their response to adversity. Hopefully, we will not experience another pandemic during our lifetime, but the experience has made us stronger and better prepared for sure.”
Maybe, just maybe, the next healthcare crisis will not prove as brutal.