Making a Difference, One Call at a Time
\n<\/strong>Fourth-year medical student Candice Quarella, 26, of South Windsor, has been with the COVID tele-surveillance project since its start last April.<\/p>\nShe is grateful she applied to join CT AHEC\u2019s extracurricular, interprofessional Urban Service Track (UST) early on in medical school, and for the volunteer opportunities it has given her to help underserved urban patient populations.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, when the pandemic hit, all of us third and fourth-year medical students were pulled from our clinical training rotations,\u201d says Quarella. \u201cI was supposed to start my internal medicine training but had to stay home until June. We all wanted to do something to help. We were trying to train to be future doctors but there was nothing we could do just yet in person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thanks to CT AHEC, the COVID-19 tele-surveillance program was born.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a way us medical students could really contribute to the new pandemic\u2019s response while being initially remote and virtually learning,\u201d says Quarella.<\/p>\n
\u201cCandice is one of our longest invested students in the UConn Health tele-surveillance project and now, a trainer,\u201d says Clark-Dufner.<\/p>\n
As part of the main tele-surveillance program, any patient who receive a positive COVID-19 test at UConn Health would be referred to the student-run program for follow-up by phone. \u201cIt was a good way to keep track of our patients, and especially those patients who may fall through the cracks. In particular, close monitoring of those who were not ill enough to be hospitalized from the virus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students like Quarella would call each patient to follow up on any symptoms, or worsening of symptoms, such as shortness of breath or chest pain, and connect them with any follow-up medical care. Also, in addition to medical care, students followed up to address any possible social issue needs, and provided patients with helpful resources or connections with social services.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne COVID-19 patient who was homeless really stands out as a patient that I helped by phone,\u201d recalls Quarella. \u201cHe was going to the ED multiple times, had a great deal of medical and social concerns, and was a very challenging case. Thanks to our tele-surveillance program we were able to connect him with services that could really, really help him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Quarella adds: \u201cIt was nice to be connected to patients to prevent them from falling through the cracks. I hope the patients we called felt more connected to care and our whole team at UConn Health trying our best to meet their needs, especially during an unpredictable time of such isolation. I hope they felt a strong connection to UConn and our commitment to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following her medical education and pandemic experience, Quarella has some words of advice: \u201cMy message to all is to hang in there, and get your vaccine once available. It\u2019s been a hard year, and we\u2019re all really in this together.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the pandemic has been such a unique experience,” Quarella, who will be staying at UConn for her OB\/GYN residency, which begins in July, says. “Being intimately involved in these COVID-19 patients\u2019 lives, and helping them, will definitely stay with me and help inform my patient care in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Understanding That Health Goes Beyond the Physical<\/strong><\/p>\nAnother graduating fourth-year UConn medical student, Tiffani-Amber Miller ’15 (CLAS), 27, of Kissimmee, Florida is also headed to OB\/GYN residency this summer, but in her home state at the University of Florida. After earning her undergraduate degree in biological sciences with a sociology minor, Miller decided to stay at UConn for medical school.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year, once the pandemic hit, I still wanted to contribute,\u201d says Miller. \u201cThe Urban Service Track offered the opportunity, and I jumped on it as a great way to be involved in the Connecticut community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller joined the geriatric-focused tele-surveillance project, conducting phone screenings for isolated seniors stuck in their homes due to the pandemic\u2019s risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe called to check on the seniors, as they were very isolated, and often alone, and not allowed to have any visitors,\u201d says Miller. \u201cThanks to our program. we were a point of contact for them, so they just simply had someone to talk to. The phone was a great, safe way to connect and to provide these older adults comfort. It was very rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n
The telehealth experience taught Miller just how often the geriatric population can be overlooked, and the importance of checking on seniors frequently.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the pandemic, it\u2019s just not all about physical health, but also mental well-being from not seeing people for a long period of time,\u201d says Miller.<\/p>\n
Miller says the pandemic and her experience assisting seniors by phone has taught her to value her family and loved ones even more than before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis pandemic has taught me to really appreciate the people around me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
Like the UConn medical students, interprofessional CT AHEC Urban Health Scholar, Kelli Nelson, 30, of Stratford, is very grateful for her pandemic response opportunity to also help seniors in need. She is training to be a physician assistant at Quinnipiac University.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the sudden onset of isolation and change to everyone’s normal routine, I felt that I needed to give back and help our community. This project was a way to reach out to the geriatric community and those affected by COVID-19 to reiterate they were not alone and we were there as a listening ear and support,\u201d says Nelson. \u201cI connected with one senior in particular who was very grateful for the weekly call, as she lived alone. This phone call was something we both looked forward to each week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nelson says the most gratifying part of the experience was knowing she was bringing some light to people during a difficult time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy hope is that those affected by COVID-19 or social isolation feel as though they have been remembered,\u201d says Nelson. \u201c\u200bThis experience will help me remember the collaborative effort that is needed to help provide the best patient care and resources for my patients.\u201d<\/p>\n
CT AHEC couldn\u2019t agree more.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs graduating students, Candice, Tiffani, and Kelli will bring with them their unique experiences with CT AHEC\/the Urban Service Track into practice.\u00a0 These experiences have shaped their readiness and ability to address the needs of Connecticut residents during COVID-19 and beyond,\u201d says Clark-Dufner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Students have made more than 2,500 phone calls to COVID-19 patients and isolated seniors since the start of the pandemic<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":171121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2213,2231,1868,2235,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-171077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-health-well-being","category-meds","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 18:09:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171077"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":181719,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171077\/revisions\/181719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/171121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171077"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=171077"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=171077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}