Discussion

Our study is the first to describe the perceived benefits and long-term follow-up of an IPC-focused cooperative education position for undergraduate students. First, we believe that our study shows that the position provided valuable experience for undergraduate students within the IPC field. In addition to the diverse skills acquired (Figure 1), we found that most participants continued working with our IPC team even after completing their first “co-op” period. In free-text responses, respondents highlighted the applicability of IPC skills to various health professions and the unique opportunity to explore a field not traditionally included in undergraduate health sciences and nursing curriculum. ^{Reference Manning, Pogorzelska-Maziarz and Ward7} Second, our results suggest that the cooperative education experience might have influenced participants to consider a career in IPC. Although all participants were majoring in nursing or another health science-related field, only 1 reported awareness of IPC-related careers prior to the program. Ultimately, 6 participants worked in IPC during their careers, including 4 currently in the field at the time of survey completion.

Our IPC team has clearly benefited from the contributions of our cooperative education students. The recent SHEA/APIC/IDSA/PIDS position paper described different ways to meet the necessary resource and staffing needs of an IPC team, and clearly, there is no longer a “one size fits all” model. ^{Reference Talbot, Baliga and Crapanzano-Sigafoos1} One suggestion was the use of nursing and health sciences students in part-time, “practice auditor” roles. Our program has long employed a similar, yet expanded, concept with our full-time “co-op” students. These students become critical team members and function as IP extenders. For example, during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, “co-op” students were critically deployed to audit precautions across the hospital and supported IPs increased surveillance efforts. The students also provide teaching and mentorship opportunities for IPs and Infectious Disease-trained hospital epidemiologists, contributing to professional growth and mitigating burnout. This has resulted in student-driven research and presentations at national meetings that were completed during their undergraduate period.

Our study has several limitations. First, our findings represent a single-center experience and may not be generalizable. Northeastern University has a long-standing relationship with our medical center to provide cooperative education positions in many different healthcare fields, which facilitated the creation of the IPC role in 2005. The presence of a similar university, committed to cooperative education as a core tenet, may not be available. Additionally, there are financial barriers to establishing a position as students are paid an hourly wage. A second limitation may be the small participant pool, reflecting the 1–2 participants per semester, and may be prone to voluntary response bias. However, our high response rate would suggest that the survey results are representative of the group experience. Lastly, we did not survey current IPs or hospital epidemiologists, which could have provided another perspective on the immediate and long-term benefits.

We are excited to see new collaborative nursing-IPC partnerships form at other institutions. ^{Reference Manning, Zabriskie, Egger, Kerr, Kay and Renzi8} If possible, we encourage IPC programs to explore whether neighboring universities offer cooperative education programs and whether there are already established relationships within the institution. Our IPC-focused cooperative education position provided a valuable experience and seemingly influenced participants to consider an IPC career. Although limited to our single-center experience, cooperative education has afforded us a unique mechanism to address continual resource and workforce challenges.