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MEDICAL SCHOOL
EVALUATION & GRADUATION

Banner Celebrating Summer 2020 GME COVID Deployers.

In a post-event survey administered to cated when our internal medicine subspe- the GME CDDP again through mid-March
participating residents and fellows, the over- cialists began supporting inpatient teaching 2021. We deployed 187 residents and fel-
all deployment experience was viewed as teams. Freeing our internal medicine hospi- lows from 26 different GME programs, as
positive for two-thirds of residents, and one- talists enabled them to manage the increased well as the oralmaxilofacial surgery residents
half of the respondents stated they would be COVID patients. This was before any resi- from the dental school and physician assis-
willing to deploy again if the need arose. dents were yet cross-deployed. We also better tant, occupational therapy, physician therapy
Ninety percent felt their personal safety was communicated when our trauma faculty ex- and respiratory therapy trainees from the
important to the care team. We also learned panded our COVID ICU capabilities by School of Health Professions. The physician
from the feedback that we had insufficiently opening up the COVID ICU Green Team support was so remarkable that only a very
highlighted the additional COVID cover- for a second time, initially without resident limited number of locums or other external
age our UTHSA physician faculty had pro- support. We had faculty from at least five physicians (i.e., deployed military) con-
vided during the first surge. So, as we entered different specialties cross-deploy to help tributed to either COVID surge. In the end,
into a second surge of COVID patients in with our palliative care services. Finally, be- more than one-third of our GME trainees
November of 2020, we better communi- ginning mid-December 2020, we activated deployed from their routine training to help
directly to meet the demands of caring for
COVID-19 patients.
The UTHSA, UH and VA demonstrated
remarkable agility, collaboration and inno-
vation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Regarding innovation, new processes for as-
signing and tracking residents and fellows to
support clinical activities at UH and the VA
were created as deployments that had never
been considered before. Best practices were
adopted from our own programs and other
institutions and tailored to our unique situ-
ation while maintaining compliance with
the key tenets and accreditation standards of
the Accreditation Council for Graduate
Medical Education (ACGME). We were
contacted and shared our practices with at
least four different institutions during the
Palliative Care and COVID ICU Green Team Rounding: Faculty and residents from 6 different departments. surges. Our efforts were also presented in an
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