Guidance for using text, email, and video communication in practices devoted to reproductive medicine.

The prevalence and ease of electronic communication, specifically email through patient portals associated with electronic medical records or via traditional enterprise email clients (e.g., Outlook) and video, have resulted in increased use for rapid communication between practitioners and their patients. Concerns regarding patient privacy and compliance with the regulations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) remain a barrier to routine incorporation of electronic communication into practice. Furthermore, capital investment, implementation, and maintenance costs may provide additional barriers. These long-standing concerns have been heightened and tested by the COVID-19 pandemic. Best-practice guidelines for the secure and safe use of electronic communication with reproductive care patients are provided.

Interactive pedagogical tools could be helpful for medical education continuity during COVID-19 outbreak.

Training and education are essential for medical students. During the COVID-19 outbreak, numerous schools and universities have had to close. Ensuring pedagogical continuity requires alternatives to the traditional classroom, especially in medical education. Usual distance learning tools such as videos and downloadable handouts are not sufficient to promote efficient teaching. Distance learning requires self-motivation and does not give you direct access to your instructor. Some students fear the loss of human contact with an instructor - like asking questions during and after class - which promotes learning, understanding and communication. Moreover, classical distance learning methods do not offer immediate feedback that can help students in their understanding of the lecture. In this context, interactive pedagogic tools (IPT) could be useful for medical education continuity and for maintaining human contact necessary in pedagogy. We briefly evaluated interactive pedagogic tool compared to traditionnal distancial tools on medical students. This study showed the importance to have direct contact with a teacher and feedback during a lecture and to not exclusively perform distance learning without direct interaction and feedback. Hence, in the present context, we encourage teacher to use this type of tools to maintain direct interaction with students - which is essential in pedagogy - and ensure a qualitative pedagogical continuity.

YouTube as a source of information on COVID-19 and rheumatic disease link.

INTRODUCTION/OBJECTIVES: The current 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is continuing to spread rapidly despite all efforts. Patients with rheumatic disease may have higher levels of anxiety due to their disease characteristics and medications. The web-based platforms are widely used sources for gaining medical information. YouTube presents a wide range of medical information, but there are concerns on its quality. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the quality of the YouTube videos about COVID-19 and rheumatic diseases link. METHOD: This is a descriptive study. A total of 360 videos listed by the YouTube search engine (www.youtube.com) in response to six search terms were evaluated. The Global Quality Scale (GQS) was performed to evaluate video quality. Three groups were formed according to GQS scores: high quality, moderate quality, and low quality. Video parameters were compared between these groups. RESULTS: After the exclusion criteria, 46 videos were reviewed. Of the videos, 41.4% (n = 19) were of high-quality group, 21.7% (n = 10) were moderate-quality group, and 36.9% (n = 17) were of low-quality group. Significant difference was detected between the quality groups in terms of views per day (p = 0.004). No significant difference was detected in comments per day (p = 0.139) and like ratio (p = 0.232). CONCLUSIONS: Besides high-quality videos, there were substantially low-quality videos that could cause misleading information to spread rapidly during the pandemic. Videos from trustworthy sources such as universities, academics, and physicians should be kept in the foreground.Key Points•Web-based platforms have become an important source of health-related information. One of the most important online sources is YouTube because it is easy accessible and free.•Of the videos evaluating the link between COVID-19 and rheumatic diseases, 41.4% (n = 19) were of high quality.•The main sources of high-quality videos were academics/universities and physicians.•The most frequently discussed topics in videos were the place of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19 and whether to continue the use of existing rheumatological drugs.