Students, Faculty, Residents, Staff, Alumni, Board Members and our many Friends,
Greetings from a rainy and cool Horsham, PA. We continue with our online teaching and learning as we all shelter in place and start to model our new face masks in the interest of keeping ourselves, as well as others, healthy and safe. Even with the limited access we have to our physical campus, our students and faculty have been busy and productive.
While many of us are working from home, many faculty members from our Physician Assistant (PA) program have been on the front lines of fighting the pandemic. The majority of our PA faculty are maintaining their clinical practices in emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, women's health, urgent care, and pediatrics, in addition to their increased teaching workloads and responsibilities over the past few weeks. We are all very grateful for their resourcefulness, innovation, and tireless dedication to our students' welfare, in addition to the work they are doing in our communities to help keep patients healthy and safe. Thank you!
As you might remember from last week’s update, April is Occupational Therapy (OT) Month, so we’re trying to highlight some of the things going on in that program. For starters, our OT faculty are always trying to include wellness into their messaging to students. During her weekly online meeting with her Post- Professional Doctorate in Occupational Therapy (OTD) students, Dr. Andrea Tyszka posed the question to her students: “How can students volunteer to help during the pandemic?” She got some great responses.
Dr. Tyszka has been pretty busy. Her first-year OT students are in a five-hour synchronous class titled "OT Theory and Practice for Children and Youth." With classes being taught virtually, faculty realized that it is a long time for students to be sitting on the couch staring at their computer screens. Sharon Marcy came up with an idea, which was wholeheartedly supported by Dr. Tyszka, to have a "Bring Your Pet to Class Day" to break up the monotony and encourage students to incorporate their fur babies into the learning experience. There are some very interesting (and cute) pictures here!
Optometric Residency Match Day occurred in March, when future optometric residents learned which residency programs they’ve been selected for. Despite the current situation, it appears that nothing can temper the thrill of that day. When the 2020-21 residency class was announced, there was no shortage of excitement. Congratulations to all of our new residents!
We are completing our 7th week of online training, social distancing and sheltering in place. I couldn’t be prouder to be part of our creative, innovative and resourceful Salus Team. We’ve got a long way to go before we get back to any degree of what we would consider normal, but we’ll get there. People have asked me for a date when we’ll be able to come back to campus. My crystal ball is a bit murky on this, but given the fact that Governor Wolf has just released his plan for reopening the Commonwealth, which is based on the number of people exposed per number of people in any given county, I anticipate it will be at least 2 -3 weeks before we can have access to campus facilities. I’ve asked Secretary of Health, Dr. Rachel Levine, to consider categorizing graduate-level health science education differently from other types of schools, which won’t open until much later in the process. She and her staff are looking at options and they’ve promised to get back to us. The one thing I can assure everyone is that we have developed a comprehensive plan for reopening and as soon as we get a green light, we’ll be ready to go.
With all the things swirling around us as a result of the pandemic, you might be feeling a bit anxious, fatigued and even a bit overwhelmed by all this. Many things in our lives have suddenly changed or have been placed on hold because of the pandemic. These feelings are perfectly normal. After all, no one has been through anything quite like this in our lifetimes. Please don’t hesitate to talk to someone you trust about your feelings. Our counselors in CPPD would be more than happy to talk or just listen to you. You can make an appointment with one of them here.
Finally, as we approach this weekend, please, if you go out and are going to be around other people, wear a face mask and maintain your social distancing. Continue with your hand washing and keeping your spirits high. While this isn’t going to end soon, it will end.
We are SALUS STRONG and moving forward, we will help to define a new normal.
Mike
No comments:
Post a Comment