How medical students in a COVID-19 command centre improve communication and decrease physician workload

Last year the global community was confronted with COVID-19, a rapidly spreading pandemic disease. Hospitals had to cope with an increasing number of infectious patients, at times overwhelming their capacity. To prevent further transmission of the coronavirus, several protective measures had to be taken, such as the setup of large quarantine admission cohorts in hospitals, including in intensive care units (ICUs), and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE). The shear load of patients as well as these protective measures brought along certain difficulties for the staff working on the ICUs. Healthcare workers experienced problems in communication due to the mandatory strict use of PPE precluding easy access to cell phones and computers. Also, the increased workload restricted time for individual patient care. Hence, a different approach to the way we delivered our care was required. In this short report we describe the implementation of a student-managed command centre at Leiden University Medical Centre, which was designed to reduce the workload of our clinical staff and to increase the quality and ease of communication.