Following COVID-19 clinicians now overwhelmingly accept virtual clinics in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery.

Virtual consultations and telemedicine have been an emerging trend in modern medicine, which has seen acceleration in uptake across a wide range of specialties as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following on from previous work by the authors in 2019 examining clinician and patient appetite for virtual consultations in maxillofacial surgery, we sought to evaluate whether there had been a change in attitudes as a result of the pandemic. A clinician survey of the consultants at a large teaching hospital and prospective data collection of virtual consultation outcomes was carried out from the inception of UK government lockdown measures to tackle the pandemic. From 151 consultations, 149 (98.7%) successfully established a working diagnosis and treatment plan and/or concluded an episode of patient care, without the need to convert to a face-to-face encounter between clinician and patient. The total number of consultations (virtual or otherwise) was significantly lower than the same time period the preceding year however (1,223 compared with 465 consultations). All consultants surveyed felt the pandemic had altered their opinion of virtual clinics and their place in maxillofacial surgery but cited a number of issues. Further work is required to understand the driving forces behind staff attitudes and the long-term adoption of telemedicine within the specialty as services return to some sense of normalcy.

Maxillofacial education in the time of COVID-19: the West Midlands experience.

COVID-19 has accelerated a reliance on virtual technology for the delivery of postgraduate surgical education. We sought to develop a regional teaching programme with robust quality assurance. Webinars were delivered on a weekly basis by subspecialty experts using Zoom™ augmented with interactive polling software. Trainee feedback comprised Likert item rating on content and delivery, free text comments and self-assessed confidence levels using visual analogue scale (VAS) scores. A focus group was also convened and transcripts assessed with grounded theory analysis. Likert items revealed 442 (93.2%) positive responses regarding content and 642 (96.7%) positive responses regarding trainer delivery. There were statistically significant improvements in VAS scores across all programme content. Key themes from the focus group analysis were the pragmatics of delivering online education, issues surrounding trainer interactivity in the virtual world, the identification of the FRCS as a driving factor and a desire for case-based content and pre-learning of information (the 'flipped classroom'). We are continuing to be reactive to trainee feedback in developing our online learning programme which will also include a regional Moodle-based virtual learning environment (VLE), the subject of future educational research in our region.