The Covid-19 health emergency places activities at the UVic-UCC on a virtual footing and triggers resources to cope with the pandemic

Share:

  • Albert Juncà: «Each course has looked at the best ways of adapting in their specific situation, because we have all kinds of subjects and some have needed in-depth and complex changes»
  • The pilot tests for working online that were already under way at the University went from the beta phase to widespread application from one day to the next

The decision to suspend all face-to-face academic activities taken by the Government of Catalonia took on 13 March as a result of the Covid-19 health emergency and the subsequent decree of the state of alert have led to major changes in routines at UVic-UCC. Since the first day of the lockdown imposed to cope with the pandemic, all face-to-face teaching activities have been transferred to the virtual environment, so that both teachers and students are able to continue with their classes at home. The University's administrative and service professionals are also teleworking, which means that despite being physically closed, the University is still open and operating at full capacity.

With online teaching fully under way and with no end date in sight, the Vice-Rector for Teaching Staff at UVic-UCC, Albert Juncà, provides a very positive assessment of the rapid and unforeseen process which has taken place: "as the scenario of having to stop face-to-face classes seemed to be likely, the Rector's Office began work to deal with the situation a few days before it happened." As a result, on the same day that the suspension of face-to-face teaching was announced, "all teachers had already received their initial instructions, which they have continued to receive on a constant basis through the deans' offices and heads of studies." According to the Vice-Rector, an essential factor has been that "each course has looked at the best ways of adapting in their specific situation, because we have all kinds of subjects and some have needed in-depth and complex changes."

The entire university community's willingness to adapt to the new situation has also been crucial. "In general, the teachers' response has been exemplary, and they are working on keeping to the scheduled academic planning," explains the Vice-Rector, who says that the major challenge now involves carrying out assessment which will be mainly virtual, and which must be thorough, secure and ensure that students have acquired the appropriate knowledge. The role played by the Office of the Vice-rector for Academic Affairs, which has developed protocols, guidelines and various didactic documents to guide teachers in the new non-face-to-face academic context, has also been crucial in this process of constant transformation. Materials, educational support areas and regular training and forums for digital guidance have also been created by the Office of the Vice-rector for Innovation on the Manresa Campus and by the Teaching Support Unit on the Vic Campus.

«The teacher's response has been exemplary, and they are working on keeping to the scheduled academic planning»

The efforts by teaching staff and students to adapt to the new situation have also involved most of the administrative and services areas. The People Management, Information Systems and Teaching Innovation departments facilitated the transition to the virtual environment on the Manresa campus. On the Vic campus, this task fell to the Information and Communication Technology Unit, while the General Infrastructures and Services Unit has been responsible for closing the physical facilities, monitoring the community's health and managing the facilities that workers and students may need to remain operational. Digital tools such as the Microsoft TEAMS collaborative platform, Zoom.us, Stream and GotoMeeting have become essential in everyday relationships between all members of the community, both for teaching and when holding meetings and making video calls, for administration and sharing information.

«Coronavirus has simply accelerated the process of adapting to digital tools which we had already been using in a pilot phase for quite a few months»

"The fact that the University was already 80% computerised before this exceptional situation has helped us a great deal," says Joan Busquiel, director of the Information and Communication Technology Unit at UVic. He explains that "coronavirus has simply accelerated the process of adapting to tools that we had been looking at for quite a few months, and which we were already using in a pilot phase, not thinking in terms of a lockdown, but about how to facilitate teleworking and balance people's work and family lives." For example, a teleworking pilot test has been in place on the Manresa campus since January, and it has been rolled out with the lockdown. The People Management departments have provided support for the teams involved in managing this change and process of adaptation, and have produced guides with organisational and technical recommendations for teleworking, and taking preventive and health measures while teleworking.

A case in point has been the Faculty of Medicine, which has coped with the lockdown with two additional challenges: on the one hand, the specific format of its subjects, which are taught sequentially, with a dense syllabus, a very tight schedule and a large number of teachers involved; and on the other, the fact that 90% of the faculty of the Faculty members are professionals who work in health centres, whose usual workload has been vastly increased. In this case, classes have continued to follow the calendar to the letter since the first day, and the laboratory activities, analysis of clinical cases and practical sessions have been adapted to the virtual context, apart from a very few exceptions.

«Sequential subjects and teachers in health centres are the main challenges for the Faculty of Medicine in online teaching»

According to the Vice-Rector for Teaching Staff, "as well as the satisfaction at having managed to make this adjustment quickly with minimal problems, there is also the uncertainty about the situation we are experiencing, and which is constantly changing." When facing an assessment procedure that will be almost 100% online, as well as a different and late university entrance examination schedule and a registration process for first-year students for the first time, the doubt over how some internships and teaching activities carried out on a face-to-face basis will be able to take place are some of the uncertainties that will be resolved in the coming weeks and months. According to Juncà, "this experience will have been useful for exploring a world we didn't know much about - the virtual world - to dispel the fears it created, and to discover what has been useful to us and what hasn't, so that online teaching resources can be a very good complement to face-to-face teaching in the future."

«We will have dispelled the fears that the virtual world created: online teaching resources can be a very good complement to face-to-face teaching in the future»

Final year nursing students and teaching staff work in hospitals

The health emergency caused by the Covid-19 outbreak has returned staff on the bachelor's degree programmes in Nursing on both the Vic campus and the Manresa campus at UVic-UCC to the front line of healthcare teaching. Some of them had not practised professionally for some years. Final year students on the bachelor's degree programme in Nursing and teaching staff have also been working in hospitals, while other teaching staff working in the healthcare field who are involved in both academic and clinical work have increased the latter without the former being affected.

This applies to Marina Mateu, a doctor in Nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Manresa, who has returned to her previous job in the intensive care unit of the Althaia Foundation's Hospital Sant Joan de Déu as a result of the pandemic. She says that what surprised her most when she returned to the hospital was "the silence in the corridors". "We live in a Mediterranean culture and our hospitals are noisy, but now you only hear the nurses," says Mateu, adding: "I also saw the fear in the eyes of my first patient: fear of asking, of saying anything, of speaking... the sick don't ask any questions. We had a waiting room full of patients and nobody was saying anything."

Marina Mateu: «the silence in the corridors and seeing the fear in the patients' eyes is what struck me most about my return to the hospital»

Montse Soler, doctora en Infermeria, combina la docència al campus Manresa amb la seva feina com a infermera del SEM. Assegura que, malgrat haver treballar sempre a urgències i haver-ne vist de tots colors, mai havia viscut una situació com aquesta. «Treballem amb EPI, mono, mascareta i ulleres que no et deixen ni veure ni respirar bé, i que et fan llagues a la cara; tenim psicosi de no tocar res, de marxar de l’hospital dutxats i amb roba neta per no portar el virus a casa, i d’estar al màxim d’apartats de la família per no contagiar-los», relata Soler, per a la qual les jornades són «esgotadores i intenses i amb unes condicions que no són les òptimes».

Several teachers from the Faculty of Health Sciences and Welfare on the Vic campus have voluntarily answered the call by the Hospital Consortium of Vic (CHV). Some, such as Montse Faro and Olga Isern, have not worked as nurses for decades, and as such going back to a hospital as a healthcare professional has been a challenge. Olga Isern had not cared for patients in an Intensive Care Unit for 20 years, when she was working at what was then known as the Vic General Hospital. "Although the situation is very tough, and going back to the front line of the ICU has made a major impression on me, the camaraderie these days has been amazing," Isern says.

Olga Isern had not cared for patients in the ICU or hospitals for 20 years, while for Montse Faro it had been 30 years

The challenge, she explains, has been twofold: first, she needed to renew and update some of her knowledge and methods in record time, and second, the overcrowded situation in the Hospital "can affect you on a psychological level." "My voice was shaking," she recalls, "when I had to telephone a girl who had both her father and mother in the ICU," says Isern, "even when you think you're ready, the experience is very difficult." Faro had not been completely responsible for a patient since 1989, and for that reason, she admits that "the experience is very intense and the responsibility has been a heavy one."

Students, teachers and professionals - shoulder to shoulder

During the health emergency, the call from hospitals has also been extended to include final year students on the bachelor's degree programmes in Medicine and Nursing. That is why the UVic-UCC teaching staff who have returned to clinical work have done so alongside fourth-year nursing students, who are either already doing internships at the Hospital and have stayed there to help, or have volunteered to work there. The students do shifts of 12 hours a day on alternate days, which they combine with their classes and the added challenge of doing their bachelor's thesis in their final year.

The volunteer fourth-year students do shifts of 12 hours a day on alternate days, which they combine with the final stretch of their bachelor's degree course

This applies to Iris Alarcon, a fourth-year nursing student on the Vic campus, who says that "it's very tough just a few months before graduating, but as a future nurse I couldn't stay at home knowing that there are people who need us there, and we can be useful." However, she acknowledges that combining her studies with these long working days as a volunteer in such a difficult situation makes it difficult to concentrate. "We spend 12 hours with our PPE on and we are very tired when we leave: the situation inside is so surreal that you can't believe it."

On the Manresa Campus, 24% of first-year students and 39% of second-year students have been working as assistants, caregivers, technicians and caretakers, mainly in public health centres and residential homes. Meanwhile, 54% of third-year and 73% of fourth-year students have done so, mostly in hospitals and primary healthcare centres.

Equipment and materials for the healthcare sector

UVic-UCC has provided the healthcare system in his region with materials and equipment that are normally used for theoretical and practical training for students in fields such as Health and Biosciences, as well as for projects by various research groups.

At the beginning of the lockdown, the Vic campus donated its safety material to the Hospital Consortium of Vic (CHV). The materials came from the laboratories of the Faculty of Science and Technology (FCT), the Faculty of Health Sciences and Welfare (FCSB), the Faculty of Medicine and the BETA Technological Center.

A total of 7,000 gloves, 1,510 surgical masks, 150 disposable protective gowns, 50 plastic foot covers, 5 litres of surface disinfection alcohol, a protective overall complying with Directive 89/686/EEC (RD 1407/1992 Spain), an EN ISO 13688:2013 TP TC 019/2011 overall and 24 EN 149-2001 A1:2009 masks were delivered. The campus also provided the RT-PCR equipment purchased as part of the PECT-Osona Social Transformation project. These items of highly specialised laboratory equipment can be used in the process to diagnose coronavirus.

The Manresa campus donated masks and provided hospital beds and respirators, among other equipment. Together with the company Unihàbitat, it also arranged for 80 beds to be transferred from Sant Cugat del Vallès and Barcelona to the Hospital Sant Joan de Déu in Manresa. Meanwhile, the Innovation and Research Area of UManresa has coordinated various organisations involved in the production, assembly and distribution of personal protective equipment with the Althaia Foundation, Avinent, Eurecat, the UPC Manresa and Manresa City Council.

The University Clinic has become the reception point for equipment produced using 3D printing technology made by people and companies on a voluntary basis. The different parts and components are also assembled there, as it is a safe and hygienic environment with protection and sterilisation equipment. The digital printer on the Granollers campus is also working non-stop to produce protective material for health centres in the Vallès Oriental and Maresme region, and various students on the Vic campus have individually joined collaborative initiatives with the same objective.

UVic-UCC has also been actively involved in setting up a virtual community of practice for caring for senior citizens. It aims to enable residential homes in Central Catalonia to train their professionals and newly incorporated staff to meet the needs arising from the Covid-19 pandemic. The University has participated in this collaboration initiative through the Manresa Campus, with the Unió Consorci Formació, the Catalonia Health and Social Consortium, the Sant Andreu Salut Foundation, Manresa City Council, the Central Catalonia Health Region (CatSalut) and the Bages-Berguedà-Solsonès Primary Healthcare Service (which includes the Moianès region) of the Catalan Health Institute.

Indeed, various research groups, chairs and researchers at the institution are also participating in several initiatives, all of which are aimed at studying and improving health, social and economic aspects arising from this crisis. An example is the specific Covid-19 module of the Interactive Clinics platform, developed by the Innovation and Research unit of UManresa with the company BitGenoma and the University of Newcastle (Australia). This resource, which enables the early identification of infections, remote monitoring of patients and treatment of cases with mild and moderate symptoms, has been made available to Central Catalonia's health system.

Ways to make the lockdown easier

With the university community scattered, forced to remain at home teleworking or telestudying, UVic-UCC's various services and areas have launched a wide variety of initiatives to make coping the lockdown easier, and to provide support for people who may need it in different areas. The psychological, psychopedagogical and functional diversity care services on the two campuses have been placed on high alert.

At the same time, teachers and researchers in very different knowledge areas are sharing their expertise with the rest of the community, and with society in general, using various resources, such as the newsletter UManresa, a prop en la distància [UManresa - near while far]. This journal includes videos with recommendations, advice and thoughts on the lockdown in areas as diverse as health, emotional well-being, nutrition, childcare, economics, technology, communication and language learning. The same applies to the space dedicated to coronavirus on the UVic websitewhere among other items, researchers at the Physical Activity and Sports Studies Centre provide advice on staying active at home, teachers on the degree course in Human Nutrition and Dietetics give diet recommendations, and experts from the Chair in Mental Health provide guidelines in this area.

There are also many initiatives on the institution's social networks, including activities in real time (concerts, physical exercise sessions and yoga or zumba classes, among others) on UVic and UManresa's Instagram account, and the lockdown diarywith stories and reflections that various members of the university community are sharing about their everyday life on the Manresa campus.