Dear students, staff, and faculty,
We have been encouraged by recent trends in California and the Bay Area with respect to lower numbers of new infections and positive test percentages. Likewise, there has been significant progress with vaccination efforts in the UCSF community, and with CDC guidance around what additional activities the general public might expect to be able to do after vaccination. We also make decisions in consultation with our partner UC Schools of Medicine and other schools across the country.
While we are awaiting further direction about how CDC guidance will translate into policy and regulation change in California and at UCSF, we wanted to let everyone know about changes that can now take place in the clinical environment with respect to learners interacting with patients who are known or suspected to be positive for COVID.
As a reminder, we are continuing to follow all policies and procedures related to caring for patients with COVID at assigned clinical sites. Based on the success of vaccination within the medical student classes, and to be in alignment with the practice of our medical teams, we are now altering the general policy as follows:
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F2 and Career Launch students who are vaccinated are permitted to participate in the care of patients who are known or suspected to be positive for COVID (i.e., patients whose COVID status requires an enhanced level of precaution [e.g., “Novel Respiratory Virus precautions”])
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Students on advanced rotations (e.g., subinternships or acting internships) may be expected to participate in the care of all patients assigned to the team
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F1 students should continue as before, and should not participate in the provision of direct, in-person patient care for patients who are known or suspected to be positive for COVID
From an operational perspective, course/clerkship directors will decide about the general approach to learners seeing patients who are diagnosed with or suspected of having COVID and should communicate the plans to all learners in advance of any rotation to allow individual students to address concerns and questions with course/clerkship faculty.
As usual, we ask all students, as with faculty and staff, to follow current guidance from the CDC, CalDPH, and SFDPH.
