Abstract

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic and associated restrictions had a significant impact on medical education and clinical learning opportunities for not only medical students, but for all those involved in the healthcare system. Given that up to 15% of general practitioner appointments and over 25% of acute surgical referrals are urology related, adequate teaching is pertinent to ensure medical staff have the confidence and competence to manage urological concerns in a clinical setting. This quality improvement project aimed to design and develop an international educational series of virtual teaching sessions by the collaboration of senior urological trainees from various trusts across the United Kingdom.

Method: We designed a once-weekly urology teaching programme that targeted all healthcare workers (medical students, junior doctors, nurses, advanced nurse practitioners, physician associates, etc.) using MedAll's robust live-streaming platform. The series continued for 12 consecutive weeks, with each session discussing a different aspect of clinical urology and delivered by senior urology trainees with varying experiences across the UK. Pre-session surveys and post-session feedback were collected to evaluate levels of confidence in said topics before and after session delivery.

Results: Session attendance averaged 250 individuals per session, of multiple healthcare backgrounds and from varying countries across the globe (including UK, Asia, Middle East, Australia, New Zealand). Overall confidence improved on average from 2/5 to 4/5 across all 12 sessions. An average of 4.5/5 agreed that the content of the sessions was beneficial, and 4.5/5 would recommend future sessions to colleagues.

Conclusion: Virtual teaching can thus be a useful tool to aid in improving individual confidence as well as overall medical education, even at an international level.

Additional Information

This presentation was given at the SES 2022 online conference, January 2022.