NP students play essential roles in UCSF pandemic workforce

This month’s Nursing Outlook highlights a collaboration at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), which engaged nurse practitioner (NP) students as essential members of the pandemic workforce. Telehealth and community-based clinical rotations included triaging UCSF patients with COVID-19 symptoms, referring them for treatment, supporting self-management and coordinating emergency services as appropriate. NP students also triaged COVID-positive or COVID-exposed staff and engaged in contact tracing. The students fit home care workers with N95 respirators and trained them to safely provide care during the pandemic. They also worked with faculty to provide primary care services to people experiencing homelessness. “Schools of nursing should think more deliberately about integrated programmatic approaches within the health system’s partnerships given the benefits of having students as a reliable labor workforce,” the researchers concluded. (Nursing Outlook article, 12/9/20)