HJNO May/Jun 2020

40 MAY / JUN 2020  I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS   Healthcare Briefs Learning how to care for patients in clinical set- tings is an essential part of every nursing program curriculum, and State Boards of Nursing mandate these experiences for licensure. “The academic practice partnership with West Jefferson Medical Center uses a model endorsed by several professional organizations,” noted Demetrius Porche, DNS, PhD, ANEF, FACHE, FAANP, FAAN, professor and dean of LSU Health New Orleans School of Nursing. “This innovative academic practice model places the students’ educational experience and expected clinical competencies at the center of their patient care experience. Nursing is a practice discipline that requires human to human care.” Like schools in other areas hit hard by COVID- 19, LSU Health New Orleans School of Nursing pulled its students out of hospital settings to con- serve personal protective equipment (PPE.) Now that supplies are being replenished, students will be able to return. “The hospitals have assured us there is ade- quate PPE for the students and faculty,” said Todd Tartavoulle, DNS, APRN, CNS-BC, pro- gram director for Traditional BSN Program and associate professor of Clinical Nursing at LSU Health New Orleans School of Nursing. “Our dean is working on obtaining additional PPE, if they need it. Everyone is receiving an orientation that includes PPE education, and we have also provided each student with additional informa- tion on PPE usage.” “As other opportunities arise, all our full-time clinical faculty will be transitioning back in the clinical environment with the students,” said Manning. Some LSU Health New Orleans nursing stu- dents could not wait to get back into the hos- pitals to contribute to the COVID-19 response. They have been working as Emergency Room nurse techs in the interim to help support their professional colleagues and ease the burden of an influx of patients. “As an ER Tech working with COVID patients for the last few weeks, I see there is a real need for health care workers,” said Jeremy Moniz, a JR II student in LSU Health New Orleans Traditional BSN Program. “LSU Health nursing students resuming clinical rotations will help to decrease that need.” Tulane University Librarians Help Provide Critical Information toWHO Tulane University faculty member Dr. Lina Moses, a seasoned epidemiologist and disease ecologist in the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, was deployed to Geneva where she worked on the COVID-19 response over the past two months. Receiving daily publi- cation reports, Moses is charged with rapidly dis- tributing the most impactful scientific information to the World Health Organization (WHO) oper- ational response teams. This involves the daily appraisal of a vast amount of critical literature on all aspects of the novel virus relevant to the pre- vention of infection and the treatment of those infected. Working with WHO librarians and graduate students, Moses is continually finding new infor- mation regarding COVID-19. “One of the many elements that are unprecedented about this out- break is the huge volume of publications coming out,” she noted. “Right now, it is about getting the right information to the right teams as quickly as possible.” In their standard form, these publication reports lack details needed for a rapid review of the high volume of scientific information being generated. While a new format is being developed by WHO and the National Library of Medicine, Moses has a short-term information need, which is best met by health science librarians. With so much information to digest and curate, Moses reached out for support from Elaine Hicks, her liaison from the Rudolph Matas Library of the Health Sciences at Tulane. Hicks, who holds a Master’s in Public Health from Tulane in addi- tion to her degree in Library and Information Sci- ence, created the Librarian Reserve Corps (LRS), a health science librarian version of the Medical Reserve Corps (MRS). The MRS is a national net- work of volunteers organized locally to improve the health and safety of their communities. Four days after distributing a survey to the Med- ical Library Association, 120 librarians from the United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, and Trinidad volunteered to help Moses meet her goals, including Matas Research Support librar- ian Amy Corder and Alicia Livinski (PHTM’02), an informationist at the National Institutes of Health Library. Operational response teams have formed groups based on the six WHO pillars of clini- cal characterization and care, clinical trials for therapeutics, diagnostics, infection prevention and control, risk communication and community engagement, and human and animal interface. Moses is supported by several Tulane students and alumni affiliated with the SPHTM, including Caroline A. Habrun (Doctor of Veterinary Medi- cine), Jeni A. Stolow (PhD candidate, and mem- ber of the Global Outbreak and Alert Response Network (GOARN) risk management pillar) and Emma B. Ortega, a master’s degree candidate. LRS volunteers have organized an incident com- mand system of four workgroups that continue to respond to requested searches and modify the publication list format. Moses then reviews this work and distributes it to the WHO’s GOARN Operational Pillar leads. “Librarians are in a unique position to use our knowledge and skills to participate in a response role,” Hicks said. “The Library Research Corps is a global librarian crowdsourcing approach to an immediate information need.” Other Tulane librarians are proving to be cru- cial during this time as well. After announcing the temporary closure of Tulane library facilities, Dean David Banush informed health science research- ers that Tulane library resources and librarians would remain available online to assist them in their work, despite the closure of many campus facilities.  Banush’s offer was taken up within minutes by Dr. Dahleen Fusco, assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Diseases at Tulane’s School of Medicine, who is seeing patients and is heavily involved in an observational COVID- related clinical study at Tulane. She requested two articles about a class of drugs with poten- tial as a treatment for COVID-19. Keith Pickett, a research support librarian at Matas Library, was able to send her that information in minutes so her work could continue seamlessly.   “Tulane health sciences depend on our libraries for rapid access to vetted, reliable information,” Banush said. “It is especially gratifying to see our librarians helping to keep critical Tulane research moving even in times of crisis.”