Medical Students to the Rescue: Fighting COVID-19 with an Outpatient Pulse Oximetry Monitoring Protocol

ABSTRACT

The emergency department (ED) is a key point of entry for most of these patients.1 In the setting of an ongoing pandemic, emergency medicine clinicians are forced to make disposition decisions with incomplete information and significant uncertainty regarding the disease course both on an individual and community level.2 From clinical experiences in China, Italy, and New York, it is clear that patients with minor symptoms could subsequently develop severe hypoxia with rapid progression to respiratory failure days to weeks later.3 Furthermore, while certain population-based risk factors for serious illness were known (advanced age, obesity and hypertension), there are no definitive guidelines to identify which of the patients are at highest risk of disease progression, and therefore, warranting early hospital admission. The CO-POP leveraged the availability of medical students withdrawn from clinical rotations to provide emergency medicine physicians an opportunity to discharge patients with COVID-19 with the outpatient pulse oximetry monitoring protocol and close structured follow-up. [...]we have identified the medical student body as one of the few resources that has become more available as pandemic volumes increase.