From Face to Face to Virtual – Medical Education’s journey

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an evolution in the way we deliver training across ELFT. The Medical Education Team are one of many teams that have faced this challenge and have worked rapidly to adapt using a quality improvement approach.  

The Problem 

Before the COVID-19 pandemic medical staff would have protected time to attend training sessions in person on Wednesday afternoons. However, with rules on social distancing, increasing workloads and uncertainty it was clear that the delivery of this training needed to change fairly quickly. The Medical Education Team were also very aware of the need to maintain the networking, sharing and supporting mechanisms that these sessions provided.  

The options  

The Medical Education Team created a wish list that any solution would need to fulfil: 

Testing  

The team tested out a number of virtual platforms on a smaller scale to build learning with their own team and with trainees. After running a number of small–scale tests the team found that the virtual platform Zoom ticked off all of the items on their wish list!  

They also learnt:  

• Scheduling the meeting well in advance encourages registration  
• Webinar settings need to be set prior to the event (important for security) 
• Running a practise session with presenters before each event is essential  

Results  

Below is a run chart showing the number of attendees at each training session. This shows that running these sessions virtually has enabled at least the same or more doctors to still attend despite current challenges.  

Feedback

Here is some feedback the team have received so far from training attendees:

The graphs below show feedback from attendees at 2 of the training sessions on: 1. The style and delivery of the presentation and 2. Ability to participate. The graphs show a very positive response for both questions with 100% of attendees responding positively to question 1 and > 90% to question 2.  

This is a great example of how the Medical Education Team have used a quality improvement approach to tackle a problem, test and learn quickly all in a matter of weeks to achieve a brilliant outcome!