Virtual Town Hall Meetings to Convey Emergency Medicine Residency Program Information to Students.

BACKGROUND: Applying to emergency medicine (EM) residency programs as a medical student is challenging and complicated in a normal year, but the 2020/2021 application cycle was further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to the decrease of in-person opportunities for students to connect with residency programs, virtual "town-hall" meetings were developed. In this study our primary objective was to determine whether attendance at a virtual residency program information session improved the perceived knowledge of curriculum information and program exposure to medical students applying to an EM residency. METHODS: Four study sites hosted a total of 12 virtual events consisting of residents, faculty, or both. Standardized pre-event/post-event surveys were conducted to capture medical student perceptions before/after each of the virtual sessions. Apart from measuring the improvement in students' perceived knowledge of a program by gauging their responses to each question, we used a 10-question composite score to compare pre- vs post-event improvement among the participants. RESULTS: The pre-event survey was completed by 195 attendees, and the post-event survey was completed by 123 attendees. The median and mean composite score to this 10-question survey improved from 32.19 to 45, and 31.45 to 44.2, respectively, in the pre- to post-event survey. CONCLUSION: This study showed improvement of medical students' perceived knowledge of residency programs (reflected as increased agreement from pre- to post-event survey). The data demonstrates through question responses that students not only obtained information about the programs but also were able to gain exposure to the culture and "feel" of a program. In a non-traditional application season in which students are unable to pursue their interest in a program through audition rotations, virtual town hall events, along with other asynchronous events, may be a reasonable approach to increasing medical student understanding and awareness of a program and its culture.

Creating an Automated Health Attestation System During the COVID-19 Global Pandemic Using Google's G Suite.

As of October 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic has infected over 40,000,000 people and has claimed over 1,000,000 lives globally (Johns Hopkins University, 2020). To mitigate the spread of the virus and their own liability, organizations have adopted multiple strategies to protect their employees and consumers. In addition to mask wearing, social distancing, and contact tracing, health attestations are being adopted by organizations that depend on physical contact between employees and consumers. The purpose of this tutorial is to describe how an automated health attestation and notification system can be created using Google's G Suite platform at little to no cost to the organization. When combined with other mitigation strategies and strong organizational policies, health attestations may be an effective component for organizations to include in their response to the global pandemic. The benefits and limitations of including health attestations as a component within an organization's COVID-19 policies are discussed.