Opinion Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2021. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Sep 9, 2021; 10(5): 163-169
Published online Sep 9, 2021. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v10.i5.163
Medical students as disaster volunteers: A strategy for improving emergency department surge response in times of crisis
R Ponampalam, Jeremy Zhenwen Pong, Xiang-Yi Wong
R Ponampalam, Department of Emergency Medicine, Singapore General Hospital, Singapore 169608, Singapore
Jeremy Zhenwen Pong, Xiang-Yi Wong, Duke-NUS Medical School, National University of Singapore, Singapore 169857, Singapore
Author contributions: All authors researched literature, conceived and administered the study, and drafted the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: R Ponampalam, FRCS (Ed), MBBS, Associate Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Singapore General Hospital, Block 1 Level 3, Singapore 169608, Singapore. ponampalam@singhealth.com.sg
Received: March 16, 2021
Peer-review started: March 16, 2021
First decision: May 13, 2021
Revised: May 25, 2021
Accepted: August 19, 2021
Article in press: August 19, 2021
Published online: September 9, 2021
Processing time: 177 Days and 1.3 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: The Disaster Volunteer Corps provides a unique way of teaching medical students disaster medicine principles in a hands-on experiential format, while simultaneously enhancing operational readiness of the hospital in times of disaster. This model of collaboration between university education and healthcare services provides a feasible model of structured volunteerism.