Findings from an OMFS Journal Club: Is COVID 19 The Catalyst We Have Needed to Embrace Technology?

Singh Aulakh, Gurnam; Duggal, Simone; Sutton, Mr David

INTRODUCTION: The COVID-19 outbreak has rapidly progressed into a worldwide pandemic and the need for social distancing has changed the way we learn and work. Our monthly OMFS journal club has been no different and is currently being performed using the video conferencing application Microsoft Teams. The use of a virtual setting for training in Medicine and Dentistry is not new, and, like in the case of our recent move to a virtual medium, it may be that COVID-19 has resulted in fast tracking this digital transformation. There are of course disadvantages to online teaching that traditional face to face teaching overcomes. We conducted a survey to examine how trainees' attitudes and experiences have altered with this change, and to understand whether some elements of this new style of training may be advantageous in the post-pandemic world. OBJECTIVES: To assess trainee attitudes towards online teaching and which, if any, elements of this new style of training are advantageous even once face-to-face teaching becomes possible again. METHODS: A survey was created for all trainees taking part in journal club meetings at Bradford Teaching Hospitals. Questions were aimed to ascertain differences in experience between online and face-to-face settings for journal club, including multiple-choice and Likert scale questions. A Wilcoxon matched pairs signed test was used for analysis of results comparing the two settings. Responses were kept anonymous. RESULTS: Results from the survey found that the majority of trainees found it significantly easier to attend journal club after it had been moved to an online setting and also indicated that the majority of trainees found Microsoft Teams easy to use when accessing journal club, though we did not have another online application for comparison. There was no significant difference in participation comfort between the two settings, though trainees felt that the online setting significantly improved learning effectiveness. Furthermore, 78% of trainees thought that online tutorials and meetings should replace traditional face to face meetings in the future. CONCLUSIONS: The use of internet technology such as video conferencing is not a new phenomenon and although journal clubs are typically held in academic institutions, online and virtual journal clubs are flourishing. With an array of advantages, there is no shying away from the trend to move our teaching over to a virtual medium. COVID-19 may have just provided the stimulus that has forced this transformation to accelerate.