Social media facilitates COVID‐19 training in a low‐resource country

1. WHAT PROBLEMS WERE ADDRESSED?

The COVID‐19 pandemic impacted the world in an unprecedented manner. A growth in virtual meetings allowed rapid sharing of knowledge, understanding and experiences of COVID‐19. We faced the challenge of delivering the COVID‐19 Acute Cardiovascular and Internal Medicine (COVID‐19 ACIM) webinar programme ¹ from the United Kingdom to healthcare professionals in Sudan, a low‐resource country with limited technology and information technology infrastructure.

Specific problems addressed included the following:

• Registering delegates and publicising the events

• Limited access to Zoom

• Allowing audience participation in real time

• Facilitating speakers and audience with limited internet connection

• Collecting formal feedback

2. WHAT WAS TRIED?

In total, five Webinars were delivered using Zoom Web Conferencing software. The faculty primarily included consultant specialists and registrar specialists from the United Kingdom with guest speakers from the Gulf and Sudan. The free event was publicised and delegates invited to pre‐register using WhatsApp on personal smartphones, which was the main means for communication. The sessions were streamed live onto Facebook Live with delegates watching. To facilitate interaction and help overcome the 5‐min time lag, Facebook viewers were invited to write their questions in the comments during the talk. The Facebook Live stream was monitored by the faculty and questions directed to the speakers at the end of the session during the question and answer session. After the live webinar, outstanding questions were addressed by the Faculty or speakers on Facebook. Webinar speakers from Sudan with limited internet connection were invited to close their video (to reduce the bandwidth) and deliver the session using audio only. In addition, PowerPoint presentations were emailed to the Faculty in advance of the live meeting. In case of technical problems, the Faculty could control the PowerPoint slides. Following the session, delegates were invited to complete online Feedback forms. Certificates of participation were sent to pre‐registered delegates who completed the feedback. The webinar videos were made freely available to view on YouTube.

3. WHAT LESSONS WERE LEARNED?

The COVID‐19 ACIM programme was successfully delivered and demonstrated that delivering high quality virtual medical education to a low‐resource country is feasible. Despite limitations in technology, social media remains widely available and utilised in Sudan.

The effectiveness of the programme was assessed using invited formal feedback from Webinar 3 (comprising eight sessions). Delegates who responded (n = 107) were predominantly from Sudan (n = 58), the Gulf (n = 42) and the United Kingdom (n = 6) comprising clinical doctors (n = 86), working in hospital (n = 68) or General practice (n = 20) settings. Commonest specialties included General Medicine (n = 34) and General practice (n = 24) with most reporting direct clinical contact with COVID‐19 patients (n = 60). The overall rating was 4.8 [5‐point Likert scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent)].

“I deeply appreciate the time and efforts of organizing these Webinars. You all did great job in providing doctors in Sudan with these updates, sharing comprehensive knowledge and practical skills of highly qualified and competent professionals.” Delegate

In conclusion, the use of freely available social media tools (i.e. WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube) can help deliver medical education to a low‐resource country.

Ibrahem A, Elzein H, Adlan A. Social media facilitates COVID‐19 training in a low‐resource country. Med Educ. 2021;55(11):1303–1304. doi: 10.1111/medu.14653