By Derek Wilson
Marinscope
All the personal protective equipment — the gloves, the face shields and masks, and more — and all the cleaning and cleansing that have become a new part of our daily lives amid the global pandemic seem alien and annoying to a lot of people. But some people have been using these protective steps for years.
“The janitorial staff use hospital-grade cleaners in our labs,” said Wende Bohlke, an instructor in the registered dental assistant program at College of Marin. “What people might not realize is we’ve been doing that for years. You could practically eat lunch off these tables.”
“I remind the students when taking x-rays that there is radiation involved and they should stay 6 feet away, so we’re distancing anyway,” she joked.
Coincidentally enough, Bohlke’s students are currently studying infectious diseases. They wear face shields, gloves, disposable smocks and shoe coverings, and are even graded on how well they wash their hands.
“One student told me she never felt so clean before,” said Bohlke, as she described the process for properly washing hands: scrubbing the soap into the palm of one hand with the knuckles of the other.
The first few months of the state-mandated shutdown of school campuses, bars, eateries, malls and, yes, dental offices were difficult for Bohlke, a dental hygienist with offices in Novato and Terra Linda. Her business was closed for three months, and her students had to adjust to distance learning.
“I wasn’t 6 feet away from them, but I was a screen away,” said Bohlke, who used Zoom to connect with her students after spring break.
For some courses, however, there is just no substitute for in-person learning. And the students are happy to be back on campus, according to Bohlke. Returning to campus for a hybrid learning system requires extra safety measures to prevent the spread of Covid. Students and faculty are expected to go only to necessary buildings for their classes. Before going to in-person classes, students submit an online Symptom Tracker and are given thorough scans before entering buildings.
Students fill out questions about symptoms through the online tracker before going to campus. If they can not adequately answer the questions, or are showing Covid symptoms, they are not cleared to be on campus. Teachers are alerted to students’ health and clearance status. This is. similar to an app used at other colleges and universities.
“We’ve been doing it for a few days now, with taking their temperature at the door to the building and leading them to the classroom,” Bohlke said three days after the start of the fall semester at the COM Kentfield campus. “The students are saying, ‘OK, we’ve got this.’ But we have to go through this to make it rote.”
Bohlke continued: “With everything going on, yes, we’re teaching the students to be dental assistants, but there is always a focus on the seriousness of the virus. … My seriousness is to have students remember what they are doing outside of college and if they are not taking that seriously, they could be bringing the virus into the campus.”
Nearby at Dominican University of California in San Rafael, officials and students are joining the fight against Covid.
The university and the County of Marin have entered a partnership that will enable the University to offer a public health contact tracing course to its students beginning this fall semester.
The one-credit course is designed to train Dominican students to work as contact tracers as part of the public health response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Contact investigation and tracing involves ascertaining the personal contacts of individuals who have tested positive for a disease to inform them of the need to be tested due to possible exposure.
“It is a century-old public health strategy for communicable disease control. The course is open to all students, with a preference for juniors and seniors,” says Patti Culross, MD, MPH, and director of Dominican’s Global Public Health program.
“This pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime experience – hopefully. Obviously, there is no way we could ever have planned such a formative learning opportunity,” she adds. “Students will have meaningful participation in an important public health function and in an event that has so unsettled and shaped everyone’s lives.”
Fall classes at Dominican began online on Aug. 24, with a goal of shifting to in-person and hybrid classes once Marin County is off the state’s watch list for Covid cases. Teachers have prepared unique video presentations of lab work and of tutorials for small groups. Students involved in “essential workforce” training are allowed on campus for lab and clinical work. In order to house the students, residence halls will likely be limited to single rooms.
Families have been busy the past month getting students ready for college life by moving them into dorms or into off-campus housing. Universities in California and other states are dramatically reducing the amount of available housing on campus until Covid infection rates can be more controlled and reduced. In some cases, dorm housing is reserved for seniors and juniors, or for students who require economic assistance.
For some students, renting an apartment or condominium with roommates seems like a better alternative than on-campus housing. The hope is they can create their own “bubble” away from campus. They can enjoy some of the freedom of living away from home. And while campuses are closed or restricted, students can still be close to campus for necessary classes.
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