ABSTRACT
Introduction Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) Summer School aims to inspire medical students and junior doctors to follow a career in Paediatrics, especially given the low competition ratio in Paediatrics training applications in the last three years. This year we had to move the conference to a virtual environment due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Issues We needed to modify the program to be deliverable as a series of webinars. The Summer School's capacity was increased to 500 participants (Virtually) from 75 (face to face). We explored ways to maintain interactivity, keep engagement, and fulfill our aim to inspire with a much larger group within the virtual environment. Furthermore, we refined our program to reflect the current pandemic. Interventions To reduce digital fatigue, we changed the length of the conference from 2.5 long days to 4 short days. Each day consisted of 3 or 4 webinars and a career panel session. The career panel sessions focus on sharing the individual journey, which was met with great enthusiasm from the participants. We utilized multiple tools to facilitate the interaction with the participants and speakers: Slido (Q and A, poll and quiz), a conference App, social media, and the 'Raise Hand' tool within Zoom. Measurements The conference was well attended with zoom data showed 390, 282,305, and 324 along the four days. Slido showed a high level of engagement with a total of 1005 questions posted and 434 active participants. 344 completed the post-conference survey, 80% voted the conference being excellent, and 100% voted for the continuation of delivering the conference online next year. Lessons Learnt COVID-19 compelled us to run our conference digitally, however we have gained a great deal of experience in management, leadership, and education. We learned the necessity of making rapid decisions and flexible leadership to enable ourselves to deliver quality education during the pandemic.
ABSTRACT
Background Social Media is an accompanying staple to conferences but also allows attendees who are attending virtually to interact with the day. GOSH Summer School (GSS) is normally run as a face to face event but had to be moved to a virtual set up this year due to the impact of Covid-19. This forced our attendees to change the way they networked and interacted with the day and how we dispersed education to the attendees. Methods Two main accounts were used to document the day;Twitter: @GOSHPGME and Instagram: @pgme.education. Positive feedback, attendees 'set ups' and screenshots (in replace of taking photos) of the talks were shared. Attendees were encouraged to use the hashtag #GoshSummerSchool or send photos to GOSH PGME Instagram. Results The PGME Twitter account gained 155 followers and was mentioned 196 times. This resulted in 2351 profile visits to the account and overall, 56.1K impressions were made throughout GSS. On Instagram, 24 posts were made and gained 77 new followers. There was an average of 30.5 likes, 0.5 comments, 3.9 post sends, 5.9 post saves, 26.6 profile visits and 436 views per post. 50 posts per day were added to the story feature of Instagram mainly featuring attendee set ups and opinions of the talks given. During the GSS, a survey about which additional resources students use to gain knowledge in medicine, social medial received 48% votes. Discussion The engagement statistics and broad use of social media to compliment the GSS shows how it can be used to increase engagement on virtual conferences. The uptake of social media interaction shows the potential of the platform to enable increased engagement and sharing of medical education. This also enables the increase of long-distance attendees allowing GOSH to open medical education beyond London schools and even worldwide.
ABSTRACT
Background GOSH Summer School (GSS) is a conference for medical students and early career trainees. It has been run as a face-to-face event in the previous two years. COVID-19 outbreak challenged us to reformat the conference digitally. Methods The GSS was run over four days, and the programme had main themes on each day: General Paediatric, Surgery and Innovation, Global health and COVID, and Paediatric Sub-specialties. The conference was hosted as webinar/ Q&A sessions;questions were submitted via a digital platform with anonymous options. Participants were encouraged to interact via conference App. Results 60% of the registrations were medical students from year 4 and 5. 630 different users logged in to the conference, with an average of 300 participants per session compared to 50-75, in the previous two years. According to the daily polls, GSS was the first virtual conference for 59% of the participants since the pandemic;58% preferred to ask questions using an online written platform, 4% preferred to speak directly, and 38% chose both. About the most productive method to deliver education, 36% chose face-to-face sessions, 34% Webinars, and 22% felt these two methods were considered equal. 78% voted that our format of 30 minutes presentation with 15 minutes Q &A was 'about right.' 69% felt our current format of 4-5 hours per day of webinar time was considered the best option. About 227 participants joined the conference App. 346 participants completed the post-conference survey, and 100% voted to continue the online format for next year's conference. Discussion The online GSS was as successful as the previous face-to-face events. We have learned that digital platforms can efficiently deliver high-quality education, promote interaction and engagement with the participants, and reach a larger number of students.