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Author Credentials

Basil Verghese: Academic Hospitalist & Associate Program Director Internal Medicine Residency Program

Salem Thabet: Fellow Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

Author ORCID Identifier

Basil Verghese: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6837-2896

Abstract

Introduction. Resident educational activities vary from institute to institute, with daily noon conferences or weekly academic half-day (AHD) models where dedicated protected time is available for resident teaching. The COVID-19 pandemic limited in-person educational activities, forcing residency programs to move toward virtual options, including the academic half-day (AHD). This survey-based cohort study aimed to understand residents' perception of virtual versus in-person AHD for educational activities during residency.

Methods. The survey was emailed to 72 Internal Medicine residency program residents at our institute during the first week of March, 2022. The responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson's chi-square test, and Fisher's exact test.

Results. Sixty-one residents responded to the survey and 59 were included in the analysis. Of the residents, 47.5 % (n = 28) were satisfied with their virtual learning experience, 23.7% (n=14) felt that it could be better, and 28.8% (n=17) were neutral about the virtual AHD experience. The 2nd and 3rd-year residents preferred a virtual model despite being earlier, indicating that an in-person AHD had more advantages than a virtual one. While 40.4% of all residents preferred AHD to be in person, 31.6% wanted it to be virtual, and 28.1% preferred a hybrid model.

Conclusions. Virtual AHD using Zoom is a satisfactory alternative to in-patient AHD if the quality of talks can be improved. Residents performing clinical work during virtual A HD are challenging, and innovative solutions should be identified to prevent this from occurring.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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All articles published in ACMRHD are distributed with a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. Under this license, authors hold the copyright to their work and have the right to share or adapt the article with no restrictions, as long as the author(s) and source are cited, and the use is for noncommercial purposes. This policy went into effect November 1, 2023, and applies retroactively to all articles published in ACMRHD prior to that date, as well.

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