The Patient Support Corps at UCSF
Jeff Belkora, Professor
UC San Francisco
Applications for Fall 2024 are closed for this project.
STUDENT TESTIMONIALS
“This apprenticeship has been the highlight of my time at Berkeley. It has given me a chance to help patients in difficult medical situations, and as a pre-health undergraduate, this is important to me.”
“It is a great opportunity to get clinical experience and work with like-minded people who care about creating a change in health care.”
“We have a great deal of autonomy when working with patients, and it is also a rewarding experience because the patients really do appreciate the service that we give them.”
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FROM THE FACULTY DIRECTOR, DR. JEFF BELKORA (https://profiles.ucsf.edu/jeff.belkora)
INSTRUCTIONS FOR YOUR STATEMENT OF INTEREST/APPLICATION ARE AT THE VERY BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF PATIENT SUPPORT CORPS (PSC)
Upfront Note: In August 2024, I am looking for first and second-year students, in order to assure that our program has succession plans in place for each of our teams with graduating seniors. As described below, I expect that students will participate in the program until graduation. In terms of student characteristics, I am particularly looking for applicants who come from under-represented populations and have linguistic or cultural competencies that align with UCSF patient needs. For the 2022 and 2023 new cohorts joining the Patient Support Corps, 30/38 (79%) were from under-represented populations. See https://diversity.ucsf.edu/programs-resources/urm-definition for UCSF's definition of under-represented in health professions.
Mentoring from a UCSF Professor: When students are productive long-term contributors to PSC (see below), we develop strong working relationships. This allows me to serve as an advocate for PSC students in their professional and career development. I will write recommendation letters, serve as a reference, and assist with networking. Program alumni have successfully leveraged the PSC experience and relationships to advance their educational and career goals. For example, between 2004 and 2021, the overall PSC program (including UCSF post-bac as well as UC Berkeley pre-health interns) fielded 278 students. In a 2021 survey, out of 112 alumni who were 5 or more years out of the PSC, 84 (75%) had completed medical, pharmacy, or nursing school. Another 18 were accepted, enrolled and were on track to bring the completion rate to 102/112 (91%). These alumni now comprise a community of peer support and networking, which further enriches the PSC experience.
Telehealth Internship: Students deliver PSC services remotely. Participating students will need to configure their laptops with UCSF-issued software to access tele-health and related systems. Students will need reliable access to the internet and a quiet and private location in which to perform their duties. Virtually all student participation is online, although I will convene occasional (e.g. monthly) mandatory in-person meetings, and some optional in person meetings as well a few times per semester. Some in-person interaction is essential for team-building and for me to get to know students better.
Clinical Experience at UCSF: The Patient Support Corps (PSC) presents a rare opportunity for UC Berkeley undergraduates to deliver direct services to patients as members of UCSF care teams. UCSF is an internationally renowned medical center with equally acclaimed schools of medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and dentistry. Students work as officially badged UCSF affiliate employees with access to the electronic health record and other internal systems essential for team-based health care. Students earn academic credit in our unpaid internships, and also gain experience, skills, and access to role models, mentors, and networks - while contributing to patient care at UCSF.
Student tasks: PSC students go beyond shadowing or observation – program leaders train all our students to work on a range of tasks, such as case-finding or scheduling or making outbound calls and documenting interactions with patients. For some roles, program leaders will also train students to be health coaches or patient scribes.
Time commitment and academic credit: The time commitment is 9-11 hours per week for 3 units of academic credit through the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program. The course (Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Studies 192) is pass/fail and meets every Friday from 5 to 6 pm, with a weekly assignment due by 2 pm each Friday. I also require students to protect one regular half-day shift (same day each week) in their schedule. In this way, clinical teams know when they can depend on student intern support. Therefore about 5 hours a week are dedicated to shift work. One hour is dedicated to our weekly class meetings (Fridays at 5 pm). One hour is devoted to reporting and reflecting on each week's shift. Students must also set aside time (2-4 hours) outside their shifts for additional training activities, or documentation, or for team meetings.
Multi-Year and Year-Round: Because of the intensive training provided, and the way in which student interns are embedded in teams with continual patient care responsibilities, I am looking for students who can make a multi-year commitment and work shifts year-round, including during winter, spring, and summer breaks. I will excuse students from their shifts during exams, and they can negotiate short vacations during their longer breaks.
Student availability and time management: I sort applications by students’ available time slots and assign accepted applicants to open roles in our clinical teams. The more availability and flexibility students have in their schedule, the greater the chances of matching one of our open time slots. THIS IS NOT A PROGRAM FOR STUDENTS WHO ARE SPREAD THIN AND OVERCOMMITTED. This is a program for students who want to focus their patient-facing, clinical, volunteer and service experience on a single co-curricular activity, the Patient Support Corps. I expect students will also want to develop one set of research experiences outside of PSC to complement the PSC's focus on patient service. Then students should protect the rest of their time for coursework, exams, and self care. The PSC does not promote the broken model of pre-professional students spreading themselves thin over many activities. This is a sustained, longitudinal, intensive commitment and will reward your investment accordingly.
STUDENT ORGANIZATION
The Patient Support Corps at UCSF works closely with a UC Berkeley student group, the Patient Advocacy Student Group. This presents leadership opportunities for students.
STUDENT INTEREST IN INNOVATION
My work with the Patient Support Corps is innovative (e.g. 2009 award from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BIJ8r-wbZQ). The Patient Support Corps is blazing new trails in service learning as a high-impact educational practice. Very few organizations train early-stage students to perform in such high responsibility positions. This requires students have a strong appetite and aptitude for innovation, and high tolerance for ambiguity and variation. I seek students who are adaptable to conditions that evolve. Students are constantly overcoming barriers to their participation (e.g. technology glitches, scheduling issues, difficulty in reaching patients, rapidly changing job responsibilities, etc.) This is not a program for students who expect to plug in to a standardized internship, punch the clock, clock some hours, and go back to schoolwork on a regular, predictable schedule. This is more for students who crave experiential learning on interprofessional teams, and are patient and realistic about how complex that can be, and how flexible they will need to be.
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August 28, 2024 RECRUITMENT UPDATE FROM THE FACULTY DIRECTOR
I will be recruiting for interns/apprentices to staff shifts as patient navigators, advocates, and health coaches. Program leaders will assign students to specific clinical teams after onboarding and job-readiness training. As part of your application, I will ask you about your demographic background in order to assure that our teams include a range of linguistic and cultural competencies that align with our patient populations.
Students must commit to one morning (7:30 am to 12:30 pm) or one afternoon shift (12 pm to 5 pm) on one weekday (M-F) every week. I will generally hold students to their commitments all year and during breaks. Only students who are willing to work their schedule around these constraints should apply. I will work to accommodate schedule changes when the semester changes but I cannot guarantee an assignment if your availability changes and you are not flexible.
For this recruitment, I will prioritize first and second year students, whom I will hope to retain for several years after their intensive upfront training. Before applying, interested students should closely read the articles linked below as examples of the type of training and contribution we expect. However, student assignments may differ.
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LINKS TO ARTICLES FEATURING THE PATIENT SUPPORT CORPS
You can read about PSC's work with the COVID hotline at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2021.697515/full and https://ls.berkeley.edu/news/uc-berkeley-students-recognized-exceptional-contributions-ucsfs-covid-response.
You can read about PSC's work in patient scribing (question-listing, note-taking, and audio-recording for patients) at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/15/209
(Optional) For the story behind the Patient Support Corps, consult my book DEAL! https://www.amazon.com/DEAL-Discovery-Engagement-Leverage-Professionals-ebook/dp/B012UGG0AA
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SPECIFIC ROLE FOR THE UNDERGRADUATE (TASKS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES)
Specific roles, tasks, and learning outcomes depend on specific clinical assignment but will include at least one of the following:
Task 1: Engage in clerical or data management work such as online research; data entry; transcription; data quality control; administering surveys by telephone or in person; and similar tasks.
Task 2: Call patients with upcoming appointments; assess and document their needs; and refer them to resources that address their needs.
Task 3: Take calls during shifts on UCSF hotlines. Assist with triaging patients, addressing questions, and referring or escalating patients to resources.
Task 4: Call patients who have been referred for more intensive coaching. Assure that the patients have reviewed educational materials about their condition; and assist them in writing a list of questions to be sent to their physician in advance of their upcoming consultation.
Task 5: Virtually accompany patients to visits with physicians, via Zoom. Take notes for the patient; and make audio-recordings of the visit. Summarize the notes and give copies of the summary and recording to the patient as a memory aid.
Task 6: Staff other projects that may need student assistance with patient support tasks, such as cancer supportive care (e.g. distress screening), and kidney transplantation.
Task 7: Maintain key standards after training in patient privacy, good clinical practices, legal and risk management requirements, and documentation and data collection and management.
Task 8: Reflect critically on Tasks 1-8 every week in writing and in a course meeting held on Fridays at 5 pm with the program director (Jeff Belkora) or program coordinators. Students will learn the Critical Incident Technique for practice-based learning and improvement. Our program also conducts research on the data collected by students regarding barriers and facilitators relevant to program implementation.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Students will learn skills relevant to the competencies required of healthcare professionals by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education, in the categories of medical knowledge; patient care; interpersonal communication; systems-based practice; practice-based learning; and professionalism. These skills are also relevant for students interested in nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, social work, psychology, public health, and allied health professions.
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SPECIFIC QUALIFICATIONS THE STUDENT SHOULD HAVE
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:
a. AVAILABILITY: Five hours per week available to staff (online) at least one virtual clinic or hotline morning or afternoon slot on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. Morning slots are 7:30 am to 12:30 pm; afternoon slots are 12 pm to 5 pm. In addition, you need to attend our weekly online meeting Friday at 5 pm for an hour. Plan on an addition 3 to 5 hours per week for additional meetings, record-keeping/documentation, training, and communication. Required commitment will be 9-11 hours per week.
b. TECHNOLOGY: You will need to provide a laptop with a hard drive and internet connection, and consent to installing UCSF security software on your laptop, giving UCSF IT the ability to wipe your laptop remotely if it is stolen or missing. Google Chromebooks do not meet our UCSF encryption standards. Students with Apple devices will need to spend extra time with UCSF's IT department, and may be asked to defer software and hardware upgrades until UCSF can ensure compatibility. Students will also need a USB (wired) headset for best audio fidelity. Wireless (e.g. Bluetooth) headsets may not meet our standards. To assure a reliable connection when using UCSF's Virtual Private network, you may need an ethernet (wired) connection to your internet router, and adapter to connect the ethernet cord to your device. Note: students can apply each year for funds to partially or fully reimburse the purchase of these necessary supplies on the basis of financial need.
c. COMMUNICATION: Aptitude for patient-centered, neutral, non-directive communication, including very clear verbal enunciation, high volume when speaking, and clear spoken and written English. Many of our patients are older, hearing impaired, speak limited English (you may need to speak clearly via an interpreter), or have cognitive difficulties. Our positions require a high degree of verbal communication. We will train you but you must recognize the importance of these performance characteristics and pledge to improve enunciation, volume, and distracting filler words. PSC actively seeks students who fluently speak languages other than English, but English fluency is a fundamental requirement.
d. PROFESSIONALISM. Be ready to leave behind all the informality of college campus interactions. We operate in a highly regulated, formal, and patient-centered environment. You must be obsessive about reading and following instructions, have unbelievable attention to detail, and the humility to quickly admit when you are stuck and escalate to a supervisor. You must be reliable and accountable for staffing your shifts, finding substitutes, or communicating with maximum lead time if you will not be available. You must err on the side of over-communication and respond promptly to emails, phone calls, SMS, and other messages. Our team highly prizes reliable, consistent follow through. As an example, you will need to monitor a UCSF email account that requires dual authentication, and you will be expected to check it several times a day even though you may only receive emails there once a week.
e. MATURITY. Exceptional maturity, self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and humanism. We have built a culture of collaboration, service, and peer support. My personal slogan is: Nothing is cooler than kindness. Successful PSC students are oriented towards service and contribution.
f. TYPING/WORD-PROCESSING. Ability to touch-type or enter 40+ words per minute; or willingness to pursue online typing courses to attain this threshold prior to starting with the Patient Support Corps (see https://www.typingtest.com/trainer/). Alternative arrangements possible for students who face barriers to inputting data via keyboards.
DESIRED/PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:
g. MULTI-YEAR: Preference given to early-stage students who are available and interested in participating for multiple years.
h. HEALTH CAREERS: Preference given to students interested in exploring health-related careers, especially those from backgrounds that are under-represented in health care.
i. YEAR-ROUND AVAILABILITY: Preference given to students who can maintain their shifts during Winter, Spring, and Summer vacations.
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SPECIAL NOTES
Because of resource constraints, the Patient Support Corps must operate in a fairly standardized way. However, for humanitarian and humanistic reasons, I also want to make exceptions to our standard operating procedures when warranted. Please don't hesitate to email me if you wish to request an exception to some aspect of the application process or the implementation of our program that represents a burden to your specific situation. My email is jeff.belkora@ucsf.edu. I expect most people can comply with the instructions as provided, but I will pay attention if you want to bring some unique circumstances to my attention.
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INSTRUCTIONS FOR STATEMENT OF INTEREST
Your statement of interest (application) has a word limit of 300 words. Follow the instructions carefully. I will evaluate your application in part on the basis of whether you read and follow protocols accurately, because that is a big part of our program (and of health care in general).
Number your responses as follows:
1. Begin the statement of interest with your name and expected year of graduation.
2. State how you heard about this application, for example which person or organization referred you, or where you found a link to the application.
3. Specify which five-hour shift(s), Monday-Friday, you will keep open for PSC duties if selected. Use AM to designate 7:30 am to 12:30 pm; PM to designate 12 pm to 5 pm. (These times can flex a bit, e.g. 8 am to 1 pm is OK for AM, or 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm for PM.) If your course schedule does not allow any five-hour shifts, indicate how you would propose to cover five hours in multiple shifts each week. List your available shift(s) on separate lines, e.g.
- Monday AM
- Thursday PM
4. Provide a brief written example of a time in the past when you demonstrated a key behavior reflecting PSC's required or preferred qualifications. A brief anecdote is what I am looking for here.
5. Please write a few sentences summarizing any linguistic or cultural competency you may have that could be aligned with the needs of UCSF patients. Keep in mind that UCSF patients reflect the full diversity of California. This is also where you should indicate if you are a student from a background that is considered under-represented in the health professions. See https://diversity.ucsf.edu/programs-resources/urm-definition for UCSF's definition of under-represented in health professions.
6. Please write a few sentences conveying your commitment to balance service activity, research activity, coursework, and self-care (e.g. sleep, exercise, nutrition). If I accept you to this program, what will you scale back to ensure a quality commitment to PSC?
7. (Optional) If you face any barriers to fulfilling the required or desired qualifications, and would like to request an exception, please summarize.
Your overall statement of interest, with numbered items 1-7, must not exceed 300 words.
Qualifications: See above
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Trisha Sengupta, UCB PSC Coordinator
Hours: 9-11 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: This is off campus work, however it is remote work and can be done from any private, quiet location with good internet access.
Related website: https://healthpolicy.ucsf.edu/patient-support-corps
Related website: https://profiles.ucsf.edu/jeff.belkora