ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Since the closure of university campuses due to COVID-19 in spring 2020 necessitated a quick transition to online courses, medical students were isolated from hospitals and universities, negatively impacting their education. During this time, medical students had no opportunity to participate in academic discussions and were also socially isolated. Furthermore, medical doctors and professors of medical schools were given additional responsibilities during the pandemic because they were the frontliners in the fight against COVID-19. As a result, they did not have enough time to contribute effectively to medical student education. OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the establishment of the Cerrahpasa Neuroscience Society Journal Clubs, a group of entirely student-run online journal clubs at Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University-Cerrahpasa. METHODS: The website, mass emailing, and social media accounts were used to announce the online journal clubs. Only medical students were eligible to apply. Journal clubs included psychiatry, neuroradiology, neurosurgery, neurology, and neuroscience. Following the last journal club meeting, a questionnaire created by the society's board was distributed to the participants. SPSS Statistics (version 26) was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Since March 15, 2021, synchronous online journal club meetings have been held every 2 weeks on a weekday using Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or Zoom. Meetings of each journal club lasted approximately 1 hour on average. Interstudent interaction across multiple institutions was achieved since a total of 45 students from 11 different universities attended the meetings on a regular basis. Students on the society's board served as academic mentors for the clubs. The clubs received excellent feedback from participants, with an overall contentment score of 4.32 out of 5. CONCLUSIONS: By establishing these clubs, we have created a venue for academic discussions, which helps to reduce the negative impact of the pandemic on education. In addition, we believe it greatly aided students in staying in touch with their peers, thereby reducing the sense of isolation. We realize that traditional journal clubs are run by faculty; however, we believe that this experience demonstrated that medical students could run a journal club on their own since the feedback from participants was excellent. Additionally, as a medical student, being a journal club academic mentor is a challenging responsibility; however, having this responsibility significantly improved our academic mentors' leadership abilities.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: With the integration of COVID-19 into our lives, the way events are organized has changed. The Cerrahpasa Neuroscience Days held on May 8-9, 2021, was one of the conferences that was affected. The annual conference of the student-based Cerrahpasa Neuroscience Society transitioned to the internet for the first time and had the premise of going international. OBJECTIVE: With this study, we aim to both discuss how a virtual conference is organized and perceived, and where our conference stands within the literature as a completely student-organized event. METHODS: The conference was planned in accordance with virtual standards and promoted to primarily medical schools. During the execution, there were no major issues. The feedback was collected via a form developed with Google Forms. RESULTS: Out of 2195 registrations, 299 qualified to receive a certificate. The feedback forms revealed a general satisfaction; the overall quality of the event was rated an average of 4.6 out of 5, and the ratings of various Likert scale-based questions were statistically analyzed. Open-ended questions provided improvement suggestions for future events. CONCLUSIONS: The virtual Cerrahpasa Neuroscience Days was a success in organization and received positive feedback from the participants. We aim to ground future events on this experience.