![]() This immersion in the nitty-gritty is exactly the type of learning medical faculty like Law want to see. These are usually densely worded documents full of statistics, highly technical language, footnotes, academic citations and data tables. Students read the summary put together by the fellows and then the paper itself. Once students form teams, they are given the summary and link for their article along with a three-day deadline. As a case in point, Coleman says she's never met her three editors in person. Whether the authors know one another or not, they must do all their work virtually, due to social distancing. "So for example a second-year and a fourth-year will work together." "One of the neatest parts was that work is a lot of time between different classes," says Coleman. ![]() While at times students deliberately sign up for an assignment together, most often the teams are formed either randomly or due to a common interest in the research paper's subject. Once Coleman and the team receive the list of new articles, they transfer them to a Google spreadsheet, with each paper listed along with sign-up slots for students, who form two-person teams. "They'll identify the hot articles of the week and then do a quick summary of the methods, key findings, limitations," Coleman explains. The process begins with infectious disease fellows. A full-scale operationĪs the pandemic escalated, what had begun as an experiment to aid busy medical residents evolved in an online publishing operation involving over 100 Emory medical students, a large group of infectious disease fellows, and several professors, primarily Law and Jennifer Spicer, MD, who serve as faculty advisers.Ĭoleman, who received her MD in May, became the editor-in-chief by default, and is assisted by three editors. But with visual abstracts readily accessible on social media, physicians needing specific information can quickly scroll through and find relevant resources, boiled down to the essentials. "It's all about trying to have these visuals available so that residents or faculty will have ready access to the latest scientific findings, pre-processed, so they can actually keep up when they're so busy right now."ĬOVID-19 is an entirely new disease, so often residents have no prior experience. Finally, the team shared the final product on both Instagram and Twitter, just as they do with all infographics. ![]() The dense statistical language of the paper, along with a table of data, was translated into a one-page visual abstract illustrating key findings, noting limitations of the study, and making recommendations on slowing the spread. Testing showed that at the shelters studied, 25% of shelter residents were COVID-19 positive. The project, which became known as the "COVID-19 Visual Series," involves gathering the latest medical and scientific research on COVID-19, focusing in on the highest quality and most relevant work, and translating it into accurate, easy-to-read infographics, which they call "visual abstracts."įor example, in early May the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report on the prevalence of the virus in homeless shelters. Providing essential tools to the front line With an interest in medical education as well as illustration, and wanting to help with the battle against COVID-19, Coleman agreed to join on. Would you be interested in helping summarize some of the COVID-related literature so that our residents can stay up to date?" "The residents are overworked, the physicians are overworked, everyone's overworked," wrote Law. It was March 2020 and with the growing COVID-19 pandemic, the American Association of Medical Colleges had advised that students not take part in any direct patient care.Ĭoleman was wondering what exactly she'd be doing for the rest of her final semester when, out of the blue, she received an email from Karen Law, MD, program director of the Department of Medicine's internal medicine residency program. Just a week into a course that included visits to the cardiology unit at Grady Memorial Hospital, she and her classmates were informed that all student clinical work was being canceled. Caroline Coleman, a fourth-year medical student at Emory, was only two months from graduation when everything changed.
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