Journal of medical Internet research | 2021
Video conferences of urology under the COVID-19 pandemic: questionnaire study.
Abstract
BACKGROUND\nDue to the influence of COVID-19 pandemic, conventional face-to-face academic conferences were restricted, and many of the conferences had moved online.\n\n\nOBJECTIVE\nTo investigate the video conferences of urology under the COVID-19 pandemic and provide suggestions for better organization.\n\n\nMETHODS\nA cross-sectional survey was conducted from May 30, 2020, to June 15, 2020, in China. Our team designed a 23-item questionnaire to investigate the conferences of urology under the COVID-19. IPSS 22.0 was applied to analyze the data collected.\n\n\nRESULTS\nA total of 330 Chinese urologists participated in our survey, and the response rate was 90% (330/368). Among the participants, 40.9% (135/330) of them were associate chief physicians. The proportion of participants who took part in conventional face-to-face academic conferences decreased from 92.7% (306/330) before the COVID-19 pandemic to 22.1% (73/330) during the pandemic (P < .001). In contrast, the proportion of urologists who took part in video conferences increased from 69.7% (229/330) to 90% (297/330) (P < .001). Most urologists (70.7%, 210/297) chose to participate in the video conferences at home and thought that a meeting that lasted for 1-2hours was most appropriate. 73.7% (219/297) of the urologists reported that they could take part in the video conferences smoothly, while the rest of them reported that they had ever experienced lags in video and audio streaming during the video conferences. When comparing conventional face-to-face with video conferences, 70.7% (210/297) of them thought both of them were acceptable, while 17.9% (53/297) preferred video conferences and 11.5% (34/297) preferred conventional face-to-face meetings.\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nVideo conferences were booming under the COVID-19 pandemic, but there were still many aspects that could be improved for better organization of them.\n\n\nCLINICALTRIAL