New York University is reportedly offering early graduation for its senior medical students so that they can join New York’s fight against the ongoing pandemic.
“With the growing spread of COVID-19, our hospitals inundated with patients, and our colleagues on the front lines working extra-long hours, we are still short-staffed in emergency and internal medicine,” the email read. “Burnout of our doctors has become a growing concern.”
According to the email, the offer applied to graduating seniors who have met all graduation requirements and “voluntarily agree” to work as paid interns at NYU Langone Health’s Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine departments. Students who meet the criteria would be permitted to graduate early, with an intern-level salary and full benefits.
The email added that the students can join the force to fight COVID-19, the illness caused by the CCP virus, even if they had not been planning to work in the fields of internal medicine or emergency medicine.
No other medical school in the United States so far has rolled out similar plans, according to Brief 19.
In Italy, however, more than 10,000 medical students were allowed to skip their final exams and join the workforce. The COVID-19 death toll in the European country has reached over 7,000, and more than 74,000 people have been infected by the CCP virus.
“This is the really bad news,” Cuomo said. “That’s the worst news you can have.”
Cuomo said recently that New York would have to expand from its current 53,000 hospital beds and 3,000 ICU beds to 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 ICU beds, as well as gather a minimum of 30,000 ventilators to cope with the projected demand.
“Our goal is to have a 1,000-plus overflow facility in each of the boroughs downstate and the counties,” he told reporters.
