RCSI Bahrain has carried out extra health and safety measures to ensure a safe educational environment for its students and staff members in the new academic year, in alignment with the Ministry of Education’s health and safety guidelines for reopening educational institutions under the COVID-19 pandemic.

To familiarise its students, staff members and visitors of the Health and Safety guidelines as well as the changes implemented in compliance with COVID-19 guidelines, RCSI Bahrain has created a mandatory online induction that is required to be completed before entering its campus.

As part of its adherence to social distancing requirements, RCSI Bahrain will closely manage and monitor the entry and attendance of students, staff and visitors to its campus. This controlled access system aims to limit the total number of individuals on campus at any one time and facilitating contact tracing if the need arises.

While on campus, students, staff members and any visitors will find instructional signage to guide them around campus and remind them of the precautions to take and steps to follow. In addition, a one-way movement system across campus and on the staircases has been implemented to limit contact between individuals, with specific designated entrances and exits. Furthermore, the University has installed plexiglass protection for front desks, as they face frequent direct physical interactions.

RCSI Bahrain has invested in increasing the level and frequency of general cleaning and sanitisation taking place on campus, by arranging for repeated cleaning of touched surfaces, such as door handles, light switches, handrails and lift buttons. The University has also increased the number of hand sanitisers across campus, installed hand-free/foot-operated devices for the doors and restricted the usage of lifts to two persons only.

To support the health and wellbeing of its students during their academic journey and in compliance with national guidelines, RCSI Bahrain is providing all their students with six reusable face masks which they will receive at the campus main gate which must be worn while on campus. A colour coding table was set in place in order for students to wear a specific coloured mask on specific days, which allows time for cleaning the masks. In addition, the capacity and seating of all teaching spaces such as lecture theatres, tutorial rooms, labs and clinical simulations spaces, have been calculated and adjusted in line with social distancing recommendations. Students and staff members will be provided with PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) for their clinical training, whether on campus or in the hospitals.

In the case a student, staff member or visitor exhibits COVID-19 symptoms while on the RCSI Bahrain campus, an isolation room has been designated and a protocol put in place to ensure that the infected individual receives the required assistance while maintaining the safety of everyone on campus.

The President of RCSI Bahrain, Professor Sameer Otoom commented on the reopening of the RCSI Bahrain campus, “As a health sciences University, our focus has been to support the Kingdom’s recognised response to the containment of COVID-19, follow national guidelines and ensure the safety of our students and staff. Here at RCSI Bahrain, we have worked hard to put safety measures in place in order to protect the health and wellbeing of our students, while ensuring that the quality of the students’ educational experience is maintained during this challenging time.”

RCSI Bahrain’s priority is to ensure the health and safety of its students under the new learning environment, while maintaining their successful engagement in their programme of study, and will continue to provide its students with the information they need as and when any changes take place.