Academic coaching of medical students during the COVID‐19 pandemic

a finance department partnership to create a portal for tax-deductible donations, and access to information technology licenses for volunteer management and communication.These institutional links facilitated our support of systems-level needs and granted administrators a streamlined connection to a previously decentralised volunteer network.Although many student organisations operate independently of their universities, members of these grassroots initiatives can often be identified by their common academic institution and may inadvertently create legal vulnerabilities for themselves and their institutions.Integrating UNMC CoRe into the ICS chain of command provided greater legal protection to our volunteers.For example, student leaders gained insight into critical language for volunteer release forms by working with university risk management services.This coordination also ensured that volunteers employed proper precautions when providing child care for health care workers.Finally, the ICS framework facilitated multidisciplinary collaboration.Academic health centres often consist of multiple independent professional schools, which contributes to siloed volunteer structures designed by and for specific health professions.Consolidating within the ICS framework helped our organisation to galvanise a campus-wide, interprofessional effort with a diverse volunteer pool.Our fundamental reflection is that the formal pairing of learner-led initiatives with institutional resources fosters innovation from students and academic health centre leaders alike.In the coming months, we intend to formally assess qualitative outcomes derived by student volunteers.The integration of UNMC CoRe into the UNMC ICS structure sets an important precedent for the formal consideration of student-led initiatives within institutional emergency preparedness and response efforts.