Distance learning for vascular surgeons in the era of a pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused medical and vascular surgery societies to redefine and redeploy clinical roles emergently at a pace and scale without precedent. In addition, the crisis has provoked the impetus for overdue changes to educational and training methods that have stood their ground since the birth of hospital medicine: lectures, workshops, and conferences. The spread of coronavirus has left thousands of medical students stranded. All specialist training ventures have been deferred. Educational and clinical meetings have been cancelled.

When what remains of our communities finally draws a post–COVID19 breath, specialties, including vascular surgery, must seize on the value from measures taken by major industry. Apple Inc (Cupertino, Calif) transformed its major annual conference, Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, into an online-only meeting. If this venture succeeds, it will provide a template for online-only conferences in other disciplines. Should it not, we must learn from an analysis of why it failed to work. Providing an online-only conference is a tall ask; Google LLC (Mountain View, Calif) canceled theirs altogether. Delivering a fully online international conference is not a challenge to be underestimated.

The effect of COVID-19 on routine clinical and administrative congregation has been abrupt, overwhelming, and unprecedented. Meetings of large groups within a closed environment, commuting to and from academic institutions, and physical presence at close quarters have all been proscribed to minimize the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The U.K. National Health Service, in the words of Andy Cowper (Health Service Journal), has seen more progressive change in a fortnight than has been accomplished in years of stifled effort. The instigation of virtual outpatient encounters to replace unjustifiably hazardous hospital attendances is one example. How then, should we translate these developments into the domain of surgical education?

The infrastructure is already in place to provide exclusively online vascular surgical learning, both synchronous and asynchronous. The European Society for Vascular Surgery has a proven track record of providing both asynchronous eLearning for academic learning objectives (blended learning modules and online courses, 2012-2016) and synchronous e-classes (masterclass 2019-2020). , Renowned vascular surgery conferences such as the annual Leipzig Interventional Course regularly broadcast operative interventions in real-time, sandwiched into a full day's congress schedule—a remarkable feat of both organization and technical expertise. Some manufacturers of medical devices (eg, W.L. Gore & Associates Inc, Newark, Del) have already released novel mobile applications to address the lack of onsite support when needed. However, these cutting-edge distance learning practices have remained the exception, rather than the norm. The technical knowledge exists; the instructional designs are valid—the missing cog appears to be the wider uptake of these training models. It is our hope that one of the lessons distilled into future practice from the coronavirus pandemic will be a greater appreciation and acceptance of digitally and remotely provided medical and surgical education.