ONLINE FEATURE | COVID-19’s Impact on the AuD Student Clinician Experience

By Amanda Demas, Alexis Leiderman, and Sebastian Bravo

This article is a part of the July/August 2020, Volume 32, Number 4, Audiology Today issue.

Now more than ever, infection control is one of the most widely discussed topics in any health-care environment. Infection control guidelines are changing rapidly, affecting the student clinician experience.

In accordance with the Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC) guidelines, perhaps the most influential way to slow the spread of COVID-19 is minimizing the number of people in a space at a given time. Many medical settings have reduced the quantity of individuals allowed in the facility at once which often means fewer, if any, students.

Student clinicians face restrictions because of the pandemic, resulting in decreased practicum hours and fewer opportunities for hands-on learning experiences. While remote learning resources and networking opportunities have evolved to fill in this gap, many clinicians and students in our profession continue to adapt to the impact that limited in-person exposure has presented.

What Do Academic and Clinic Modifications Entail for AuD Students? 

The most predominant advice as students are allowed back into the clinic is to develop, implement, and maintain a plan of action (Centers for Disease and Control Intervention, 2020). However, as audiology programs prepare for the fall semester, there is not one cohesive national strategy for reopening. Many programs will opt for either a combination of in-person and remote instruction, solely remote learning, or limited in-person learning.

Although maintaining social distance continues to be one of the most easily implemented and medically proven ways to stop the spread of COVID-19 (Delen et al, 2020), this strains the student clinician experience as students are commonly the first ones to be removed from a practicum site to accommodate social distancing. In effect, this limits direct patient interactions and professional observation hours, two essential components of gaining competency as a student clinician.

Even when a site can accommodate a student and still meet CDC guidelines for social distancing, their patient interactions may remain restricted because the number of patients in the clinic is also limited. Restrictions on daily patient load are increasingly common to allow more time for cleaning between appointments and less crowding in waiting rooms.