“Letter to the Editor” Human resource management in the Corona era: Changing the role of academic faculty members in line with health advocates

Dear editor, Since January 2020, a sudden crisis has emerged in the world's public health, which has spread from Wuhan, China to the whole world in a short period of time and has become a serious threat to humanity (1). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this has been one of the most significant and unpredictable global public health crises in recent times (2). The spread of the corona virus in the country and the infection of a large number of compatriots with this dreaded virus involved the country's medical staff. Among the management challenges in this era, the shortage of human resources, especially nurses, can be mentioned. Of course, this lack was felt in previous years, but with the spread of the Corona virus, this feeling of need was felt more than ever. Among the solutions in manpower management during the Corona era, according to the mentioned shortage, was the use of the manpower capacity of the nursing faculty members; So that these members were called to the headquarters departments and research centers of the university so that the nurses working in the research centers and headquarters attend to take care of the patients in the medical centers, and the professors and lecturers of the university perform duties in their place in the headquarters in collecting statistics related to Corona. . It should be noted that the presence of faculty members in the mentioned departments was not a justification for not fulfilling their main role, i.e. teaching students. Although Covid-19, in the short term, the way of education and learning faced a strange and huge change and affected the educational systems of the whole world and Iran and led to the closure of face-to-face courses in schools and universities (3), however in order for students' education not to be interrupted during the period of social distancing and for the curriculum to continue according to the pre-specified program, various solutions were presented, including virtual education (4). Preparing educational content for virtual education was a heavy burden for professors. Because preparing it with new software and sounding the slides was very time-consuming, and using unfamiliar technologies and new systems to prepare content required time and effort to learn to work with those software and systems. The teachers were also under a lot of work pressure because they had not passed specific and useful courses about the virtual education method before. The colorful role of research during working days and waiting for the university to conduct research on the topic of Corona was another role of professors in the era of Corona. The significant growth in the number of approved research projects and scientific research articles published by faculty members (5) indicates this role and performance. With the start of internships in medical education from June 2019, students who had been at home for almost a year had to show up for internships. This presence in the internship caused fear and worry in the students and their families. One of the roles of academic staff members was to calm students and reduce their fear and anxiety. By talking to the students and explaining the professional conditions, they prepared the internship conditions in such a way that after a few months, no student was afraid of taking care of patients, even the corona patients. The COVID-19 pandemic has reminded everyone of what is often overlooked, the ever-present role of nurses in the health care system. In 2020, the important role of nurses received more attention than before. The World Health Organization (WHO) named 2020 the "Year of Nurses and Midwives" (6). Many artistic images of the bravery and selflessness of nurses were shared on social media (7). These media meant the nurses who worked in the hospital and were introduced as the front line of the fight against Corona. But among the different groups of the health team, what was not seen anywhere and was not noticed was the role of academic faculty members. Although this group was apparently not in the front line of the struggle, they played a significant role in training students as the future forces of the health system. In general, although the roles of academic staff members have been less noticed by people, officials and media, their role in dealing with the crisis and the corona pandemic cannot be ignored. The experience of education during the Corona era shows that the members of the academic staff did not back down from their educational goals and duties despite the difficult and exhausting conditions and even fulfilled them with more responsibility. With these explanations, it seems that it is time to review the role of different groups of the health team, including the members of the teaching staff, in controlling and dealing with Corona.