{"pk":15892,"title":"Virtual Town Hall Meetings to Convey Emergency Medicine Residency Program Information to Students","subtitle":null,"abstract":"Background:\n 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.\nMethods:\n 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.\nResults:\n 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.\nConclusion:\n 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.","language":"en","license":{"name":"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0","short_name":"CC BY 4.0","text":"Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.\r\n\r\nNo additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0"},"keywords":[{"word":"Medical Education, Graduate Medical Education, Residency Recruitment, Virtual Event"}],"section":"Education","is_remote":true,"remote_url":"https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2vn9w644","frozenauthors":[{"first_name":"Geoffrey","middle_name":"","last_name":"Comp","name_suffix":"","institution":"Creighton University School of Medicine, Valleywise Health Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Kateland","middle_name":"","last_name":"Townley","name_suffix":"","institution":"Creighton University School of Medicine, Valleywise Health Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Eric","middle_name":"","last_name":"Blazar","name_suffix":"","institution":"Inspira Health Network, Department of Emergency Medicine, Vineland, New Jersey","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Taylor","middle_name":"","last_name":"Webb","name_suffix":"","institution":"Creighton University School of Medicine, Valleywise Health Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Mark","middle_name":"","last_name":"Keuchel","name_suffix":"","institution":"INTEGRIS Southwest Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Bikash","middle_name":"","last_name":"Bhattarai","name_suffix":"","institution":"Valleywise Health Medical Center, Department of Research, Phoenix, Arizona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Amrita","middle_name":"","last_name":"Vempati","name_suffix":"","institution":"Creighton University School of Medicine, Valleywise Health Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Michael","middle_name":"","last_name":"Epter","name_suffix":"","institution":"Creighton University School of Medicine, Valleywise Health Medical Center, Department of Emergency Medicine, Phoenix, Arizona","department":"None"},{"first_name":"Katherine","middle_name":"","last_name":"Holmes","name_suffix":"","institution":"John Peter Smith Hospital, Department of Emergency Medicine, Fort Worth, Texas","department":"None"}],"date_submitted":"2021-09-06T21:52:46Z","date_accepted":"2021-09-06T21:52:46Z","date_published":"2022-07-13T16:28:36Z","render_galley":null,"galleys":[{"label":"","type":"pdf","path":"https://journalpub.escholarship.org/westjem/article/15892/galley/7962/download/"}]}