Students help with key medical surveys

Around 100 students from Fudan University have been assisting the Pudong district branch of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Shanghai since April 18, working on more than 1,000 epidemiological surveys by telephone and making some 33,000 entries of information.

Yuan Jing, a postdoctoral student of social development and public policy at the university, is the initiator and supervisor of the team, which consists of postgraduates and doctoral students of social work, psychology and demography.

"The recruitment notice was sent out at 8 pm on April 16, and to my surprise, by 12 pm there were already 80 people who had signed up for it," says Yuan.

Wan Yuanyang, among the first students on the team, received some training in the following days by the district CDC and started calling people infected by COVID-19, who are in central quarantine, to check their information and itineraries related to the transmission of the disease.

A typical telephone survey conducted by Wan lasted 20 to 30 minutes, but for cases that involved public gatherings, Wan had to make several phone calls and spent one to two hours on a comprehensive follow-up.

Wan's major in social work has helped her to show interviewees more empathy and respect for their feelings.

"People are different, with unique characteristics and in different situations, and therefore their emotions and behavior are different," Wan says, adding that listening to them wholeheartedly was the key to establishing trust, which helped her to get the accurate information.

Jin Yan, a doctoral student of demography, agrees with Wan. "I usually don't interrupt people when they talk and only ask questions when they finish," Jin says. "There is a lot of similarity between the epidemiological survey and the population census."

Jin says the sub-team she was in received four to five batches of epidemiological surveys, and she often worked late at night to complete the reports as a team leader.

"Some patients' lives are really difficult, but their perseverance and optimism have inspired me to do my work," Jin says.

Besides telephone interviews, some of the students took up the task of sorting and checking the submitted information. Ao Jingying is one of them.

"The first day's work almost crashed me," recalls Ao about double-checking some 200 entries of close-contact information. "I needed to make sure every entry submitted by other student volunteers was logical and in line with requirements."

Ao says with the guidance of professional epidemiologists from the district, she learned more about the work and her time to complete daily tasks was shortened from five hours to three or even one. She also wrote a note on how to standardize the information input, and gave it to other volunteers to improve the team's overall efficiency.

Xiao Shaotan, deputy director of the district CDC, says "we faced burdensome tasks during the outbreak, and the students of Fudan University have given us a big help at this critical time".

Wang Mengqi contributed to this story.