Reinventing Yourself Virtually: Fifth Annual Society of Asian Academic Surgeons Virtual Conference

Abstract

Virtual forms of communication have been integrated into academic surgery now more than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated its implementation in an effort to support social-distancing. Academic surgery is now learning valuable lessons from early experiences to optimally integrate this communication mode. The Society of Asian Academic Surgeons convened an expert panel during the society's fifth annual meeting that explores these lessons. Realms of virtual communication including meetings, networking, surgery department administration, social media, application processes, and advice for early or mid-career academic surgeons are explored.

Virtual conferences pose a new challenge by removing the in-person component that is evident to be integral to networking, collaboration, and all aspects of academic socialization. Strategies such as creating virtual chat rooms, mentor-mentee virtual introductions, and deliberate interactions can enhance the experience. Virtual administrative meetings require special attention to preparation and strategies to insure engagement. Social media can be a valuable tool to integrate into academic careers but special attention needs to be made to utilize it deliberately and not to shy away from our individuality. The interview process can be enhanced when made virtual to give opportunities to those typically disadvantaged in the usual, in-person process.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the fifth annual Society of Asian Academic Surgeons Conference took place in a virtual format in late September 2020. Of this year's four sessions organized by our Program Committee, led by the Program Committee Chair, Dr. Jennifer Kuo, the second session entitled, “Reinventing Yourself Virtually,” was a panel discussion which focused on how medical professionals can adapt and make the most of the increasing presence of the virtual world in their medical practice and academic career.

The moderators of the session were Dr. Tejal Brahmbhatt, Assistant Professor of Surgery, Boston University School of Medicine and Dr. Linwah Yip, Associate Professor of Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

The panel for this session represented a diverse group of surgical organizations. Dr. Sandra Wong serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth. Dr. Justin Dimick is Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Michigan. Dr. Ankush Gosain is Associate Professor of Surgery and Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee, Health Science Center, and Dr. Feibi Zheng is an Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Weill Cornell Medical College and an endocrine surgeon and Assistant Clinical Director of Surgical Quality and Population Health at Houston Methodist Hospital. Dr. W. P. Andrew Lee is Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, Provost, and Dean at University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

With the rise of virtual forms of communication that have been acutely and forcibly amplified by the pandemic, professionals now have no choice but to learn how to navigate through this new world of communication. While the pandemic made these virtual modes the sole form of communication out of necessity, this evolution will not be going away even as the rest of the world starts to resume its new normalcy. Networking, finding mentors, and collaborating academically and clinically, to name a few, have virtual analogs to the traditional in-person setting. Our panelists use their experiences piloting through these changes in their respective environments to discuss many important aspects of being a medical professional in this growing virtual professional world. The edited transcript of the session is as below.

Dr. Brahmbhatt

Whether or not we like it, the world is becoming very small, and the evolution of human socialization has noticeably reached a pivot point. As we've gone through the turn of the century, partially exacerbated by events like the pandemic, lives and interactions are becoming increasingly more metaphysical or “virtual.” This virtual world is here to stay and is becoming an ever noticeably more important aspect of our lives. Our panel has been convened for us to explore this new world, in the context of reinventing ourselves virtually.

How has the virtual world evolved from your vantage point to become something that needs to be addressed and needs to be consciously looked at?

Leadership and Running a Surgery Department in the Virtual World

Dr. Wong

There's nothing like a good crisis to accelerate things which were already happening, and in truth, most of us were already getting much more facile with using virtual platforms. But, there was a point where we just couldn't have in person meetings anymore and that really hastened the need to get to the point where we had to be much more virtual.

Dr. Dimick

As we entered the pandemic, I thought about “What have we lost?” due to the social disruption and, as a leader, “What are we doing to fill the gaps?” We have certainly not found all the answers; but we have engineered solutions in two categories: 1) local social connections and 2) national professional networks. These networks serve as important hubs for social and scientific collaboration. We have been working to create new virtual forums to fill those gaps. As a leader, I think about how I can facilitate those. In particular, I strive to look out for those people who are the most vulnerable for slipping through the cracks in the transition.

Dr. Wong

That's a good framework. We are all learning “on the fly.” There was a critical point at which we just had too many people in a conference room and there was no feasible way to have these meetings safely. In a fell swoop we converted to virtual. Locally, groups really had to adapt pretty quickly to smaller in person meetings or convert to virtual bigger group meetings or conferences. We all had to learn how to run better meetings in both local and national situations. We all know our pet peeves about virtual meetings and there were a couple that really drove us to think about different ways to run meetings.

The first one is when people are clearly not listening. For example, during a discussion you call on somebody and they say ‘oh I'm sorry, could you repeat that last point?’ and it was just clear that they were on their smartphone. On the other hand, saying we need everybody to pay attention doesn't necessarily feel good either. These conflicting approaches drove a lot of us to start thinking about how to run a better meeting. One mistake I was making at the very beginning was just treating meetings like regular in-person meetings but on a virtual platform. Zoom time is compressed time so having the same length meeting may not work. Meetings can be shorter but have really high-end content. This keeps everybody engaged and energized, and people can always continue the conversation offline.

In addition, there is always this fussing around with your audio because you're on mute and then you're trying not to mute. I learned to pause for an appropriate amount of time so that people can unmute themselves and actually get their point across without being run over by other people's conversations. And depending on the size of the group I think video is appropriate sometimes but when the group is too big, video is actually tough to do. You really have to think about the use of the chat box or the hand raised function, and you have to know your group. A lot of it is prepping for the meeting and making sure that there's intentional content so people aren't just online to be online. Going virtual created an impetus for me to really prep and be prepared for meetings especially on a local level.

National meetings or bigger meetings have changed dramatically. Converting to virtual interviews for jobs and residency positions created a rapid need to learn how manage camera presence.

Dr. Dimick

Locally, we are working to re-establish the connections that we lost such as the ad hoc connections and the social sense of cohesion among members of our department. We focused on reimagining those virtually and keeping an eye on vulnerable members of our community. For local networking, a solution from a leadership perspective was to intentionally create those communities, such as virtual M&Ms, journal clubs, or other ritual gatherings. In addition, we encouraged our faculty to create virtual hubs of research activity. In our department, we have a Center for Healthcare Outcomes and Policy, a Center for Basic and Translational Sciences, Center for Surgical Training and Research, and the Center for Global Surgery. Each one has created virtual touch points with their members to make sure that they're fostering connections. My job as a leader is to make sure that these connections are happening in this new, more virtual world.

We have now just started to do this more intentionally. When we go into a virtual world, existing networks strengthen because people fall back on these; and it makes it harder for new people to access and enter. For example, a medical student at Michigan very early in the pandemic, had switched to surgery late. You can imagine that this created an incredible stress, especially during a pandemic. She and I discussed this challenge, how first-generation students and those from underrepresented minority backgrounds who may not have existing networks are perhaps most vulnerable. Other vulnerable people include research residents who have completely had their national opportunities for networking wiped out. Also, junior faculty who are working to develop a national reputation, who can no longer present at national meetings. As a leader I think a lot about how to help these individuals recreate these opportunities.

If you are one of the individuals, you need to be intentional and proactive about creating networks. I think it's completely acceptable in the virtual world to do what you would normally do in the hallway in a national meeting, but by email and set up a zoom meeting. If you ask a leader to set up a zoom meeting and want to talk about your grant or whatever it is, feel free to be proactive about it and create your own network. If you have a national group of people that are in your specialty area or research area, set up periodic monthly meetings and create your own community. I see a lot of this happening. For example, one of the fun things about being virtual is that junior faculty from other institutions attend our health services research workshop in a virtual forum. In a virtual world, we do not have geographic boundaries. This is an opportunity. Look to find these communities and we should collectively use this as an opportunity to further breakdown barriers. If you don't have access to a community, build one. I guarantee you other junior faculty from other places have like-minded ideas and would be interested in participating.

Dr. Yip

Dr. Lee do you have thoughts about what things you've done at UT Southwestern in terms of maintaining cohesion, building communities, and maintaining communication?

Running a Virtual Meeting

Dr. Lee

I believe that for any meeting, whether virtual or in person, it's most productive when everyone participating in the meeting is fully engaged. First of all, it's very difficult to have a meeting that is more than 10 people, and still keep everyone engaged. Secondly, it's bad enough during the in-person days for distractions to occur. We all have difficulty resisting the temptations of looking at our phone, getting a text message, or answering an email. Lack of engagement can be even worse in a virtual meeting because when people go off the video they may be either checking the emails, eating breakfast, speaking on the phone, or doing whatever else. Therefore, for the meeting that I run, I ask people to keep their video on and to be fully engaged. Furthermore, when you have a group of people, there are often some who are vocal and some who are generally quiet. Thus, I pay particular attention to the quiet ones and would specifically call on them because, from experience, they can have very valuable input, but just have maybe a greater threshold for speaking up in the group. Those are the things that I pay attention to particularly in a virtual meeting.

I want to emphasize a point that Dr. Wong made about preparation for a meeting. I'm a firm believer that, whether it's a virtual or in-person meeting, the productivity is directly proportional to the amount of preparation that one puts into the meeting ahead of time. This can include talking with some participants ahead of time, getting the number and sequence of agenda items just right, or anticipating people's reaction including resistance to some ideas. The more planning and forethoughts one puts into it, the more productive and efficient the meeting will be. When it comes to a virtual meeting, the somewhat paradoxical aspect is that I found it to be easier to schedule meetings because during the pandemic people are not traveling. One caveat though: I've been through some days where I have one virtual meeting after another, which I think is bad for one's physical and mental health, not to mention productivity. So I have made my meetings no more than 45 minutes long, so I can have at least 15 minute breaks to look in my inbox, to do other things, to get up and walk around, or to prepare for the next meeting. I find that to be helpful for me.

Networking Virtually

Dr. Yip

Several have brought up valuable points about one who is trying to move up in organizations and is trying to build research collaborations. How do we do that now that we are all virtual? What are things that people can do to try to make new connections?

Dr. Gosain

I think Drs. Wong, Dimick and Lee have said many of the things that I was going to say, in a much more erudite fashion than I'm capable of saying them, but I'll try and reinforce some of those points. I think that one of the things that has not changed from the pre pandemic era to now is being intentional in preparing for national meetings. Even before the pandemic, I would tell my trainees and my research mentees that you want to be very intentional about what your plan is during a national meeting. You're not going to the meeting just to present your research and give your talk, but you're also mapping out the talks that you want to attend and the senior mentors that you want to track down and speak to. You should have a plan for potential networking connections before you go to the meeting, and make sure that you accomplish everything that you have laid out. This has obviously changed a little bit with the new format, but I think you can still be intentional about it with some advanced planning.

In fact now this is a little bit easier because before you might have had three different abstract presentations that you want to see that are in different parts of the conference, and they're all happening at the same time. Now you can see all of them because they're often prerecorded and you're not missing content. You may miss out on some of the chance interactions that happened in the hallways, but if you're going to a meeting and your plan was to track down Dr. Dimick and have a sidebar conversation with him about your future career, your research, methodology, etc., you can and should still reach out in advance to schedule these conversations. I think that most people in academic spheres that I've met are going to be pretty receptive to that. They will carve out that time to meet with you and that's true whether you're a medical student or a mid-career faculty and trying to move up along the tenure and promotion pathway.

One other critical aspect that was touched upon is making sure that voices are heard. This is something that I learned from Dr. Carla Pugh when I was a junior faculty member and was on a committee that she was running. She was always very intentional about going through the list of people on phone calls and making sure that every voice was heard and had an opportunity to comment before moving on to the next agenda item. I think that has become somewhat easier in the era of video conferencing because you have the visual cue. You can go around the screen and say okay, of the 12 people on screen, I want to hear from Dr. Brahmbhatt, I want to hear from Dr. Yip, I want to hear from Dr. Dimick, systematically.

Using Social Media in a Professional Setting

Dr. Brahmbhatt

One very useful aspect of the virtual world is that across large physical distances, people use different modes of social media to communicate. Using Twitter as an example, we will poll our audience to see how many, for example, use Twitter within the context of their professional career.

Dr. Zheng

I use Twitter predominantly to keep up with my fellow endocrine surgery colleagues. It has been actually very useful for me in terms of keeping up with interesting cases that they might post or new surveys that are coming up from the AAES that they want some surgeon participation in. Another medium that I found to be really helpful for me, something that existed before the pandemic, is one of our specialty specific Facebook groups called Surgeon Moms Group, or what I refer to as my personal old boys’ club. Through that group, I've had multiple opportunities to promote other women surgeons as well as be promoted myself. For example, earlier last year one of the surgeons was trying to find a guest editor for an issue of Surgical Clinics of North America. I volunteered, and she put me in contact with the consulting editor. This year I was responsible for putting together a panel at the American College of Surgeons on perioperative pain management, and three of the four surgeons that I recruited for that panel were from the Surgeon Moms Group.

Dr. Brahmbhatt

In looking at the poll results, about two thirds of the respondents are using Twitter within a professional context. Since we don't know the demographics of our poll takers, this leads me to wonder whether the comfort with platforms like this has a generational aspect where many that did not grow up with social media simply have more difficulty accepting a transition to using social media altogether.

Dr. Gosain

So I'll just comment a little bit. We are focusing in on Twitter, but I think more broadly speaking, one of the things that the pandemic has encouraged people to do is to really embrace all digital tools and go beyond social media. There are other ways of organizing your life as far as to do lists or task managers, electronic lab notebooks, ways of communicating, Zoom, Teams, etc. You can try and use 10 different platforms and you're unlikely to be productive, or you can identify how one or two of these platforms can be adapted to your professional needs and then be phenomenally productive. My research group for example uses Slack as a messaging platform, both for clinical and basic science research. We're able to share files with collaborators all around the world, and that's extremely helpful. I have my specific use cases for Twitter that are probably very different from each of the panelists here. Again, you should identify your professional needs that are not being met or not being optimized with the tools you have in front of you and how can you intentionally fill that gap.

Dr. Wong

It has been a great opportunity for people who were previously not as engaged on those platforms to become engaged. For people who aren't currently active on social media, it's never too late to take this opportunity to start. People who are engaged are always happy to get other people engaged.

Dr. Brahmbhatt

One of the things that is lost and that many miss, is the physical connection that we sometimes have with people. That physical connection, to some degree, is a way for people to promote themselves in their careers. What do you think we could do with the virtual world in this aspect?  What kind of mechanisms do you think we could employ in the virtual world to help promote our careers?

Dr. Dimick

As an individual, I struggle with the notion of using social media platforms as promotion per se. I tend to approach it with the idea that it's about dissemination of work, discussion, and interaction around ideas, and networking to promote collaboration. But building a brand for yourself and self-promotion only gets you so far. There should be substance behind the style.

As a department chair, this year the only way outside applicants are going to interact with us is through our website and through social media platforms. We have really doubled down on what we're doing and pushing out through our social media channels. We have a communications team that is constantly producing content.

For individuals, I think of Twitter as probably the best professional interacting social media site. Think of it as like a national meeting in that if you're not involved you're missing out. It probably is at least as big and as influential as going to the American College of Surgeons. And if you're involved in the community, you know what I'm talking about. If you're not, you wouldn't know that it is an incredibly rich interactive source whether it's for your scientific community or learning. I'd have to say my primary use of social media right now is listening; and I get a ton of information. I follow a lot of different people, and especially in the current climate, social media helps me understand what's going on in the world outside of my own little corner.

Virtual Presence of Applicants

Dr. Yip

One of the questions from the audience asks “How much do your programs look at other people's social media accounts?” For example, applicants who are coming in for residency applications or medical student applications. In the future, do you think that programs are going to be looking at this to get a better sense for who the applicants are?

Dr. Zheng

Even pre-pandemic, after we made our rank list, we would just do a quick sweep through the social media accounts of the top list, just to make sure there weren't any red flags. Obviously, we do recognize that these are people's personal lives and might not totally be representative of who they are, but we're just looking for things that we, we as a group have decided, are potential red flags that may not fit with the culture of our institution.

Dr. Gosain

I completely agree with Dr. Zheng that, even before the pandemic, we would Google applicants in advance of interviewing them, not so much looking for red flags but looking for other things that I might learn about them that might be interesting points of discussion. I think that I would turn it around and say that from an applicant's standpoint this is an opportunity to define your brand. Knowing that people are going to be searching for information about you, it's helpful to know what's out there about yourself. I myself have Google alerts for myself set up so I know about any web search changes. But, you can be proactive about it and know what's out there on Twitter, on Facebook, or create your own website. You now have this opportunity to cultivate your brand that is going to last well beyond COVID.

Medical School Application Process

Dr. Brahmbhatt

Dr. Lee, at the University of Texas Southwestern, what kinds of things is the medical school looking at from your point of view that might be relevant to applicants?

Dr. Lee

The rules are completely changed for this season because people can apply to as many programs as they want and not worry about traveling expenses. Furthermore, because everything is in the virtual format, we have invested significant energy and resources in presenting the campus via digital media. We have a campus that we love to show off in person, but short of that we have made high-quality interactive videos that applicants can access from anywhere. We have also talked with department chairs and program directors extensively about preparing for the virtual interviews. We're also preparing our medical students for virtual interviews. Thus it's a different application season with a different set of rules this year, and those institutions that are best prepared will come out ahead at the end.

Translating Personal Interactions to the Virtual World

Dr. Yip

Another comment from our audience suggests that one of the most important parts of networking is creating personal interaction beyond just talking about work issues. These are the watercooler conversations or the things that you discuss when you run into people in the middle of the hallway and get ideas. How do you do that without the normal face to face social interactions?

Dr. Gosain

I think that's a very prescient question. We touched on this topic a little bit in that you can be intentional yourself, as much as you would have been pre-pandemic and reach out proactively to people that you want to meet and want to talk to. And as I said before, I think the vast majority of those you reach out to will embrace that and take the time. A shameless plug for the SAAS happy hour after the keynote this afternoon where we're trying to recreate some of that spontaneity. The other thing I would say is that, as faculty, try and be intentional about bringing your trainees into your office when you are having video conferences with other PI's, other faculty around the country, and have them be part of those conversations. This would be similar to when your mentees might walk up to you when you're talking with one of those other faculty at a meeting, and then you introduce them and everybody starts getting to know each other on a deeper level. My research mentees are often in my office when I'm having a video chat with a collaborator somewhere else. You start by creating an opportunity for your mentees to be present, hear the conversation and then hopefully participate or lead the conversation and get something deeper out of the connection.

Dr. Zheng

As somebody who is early career, I found that during the pandemic you fall back upon some of your existing relationships. Most of us have actually been to at least a couple of meetings, and we have a list of people that we've met but then actually never followed up with. This is actually a good time for that backburner research idea. If some of your other research has slowed down because primary data collection is really hard to do right now, you can start re-exploring some of those old ideas. You can go back and reach out to those people that you've met who you never deepened your connection with.

Dr. Wong

I'll amplify that. I actually think that's such a key point, because at meetings, we meet a ton of people standing in the hallway. Now if there's a reach out it's totally intentional and it's a little bit more one-on-one. So while we all miss that personal interaction I think we can still make personal connections.

From a professional perspective, the networking we do now can be more intentional and I try to look at the positive in that. It's really important for us to remember that we need to continue to promote our trainees and our younger faculty.

Dr. Brahmbhatt

One question from the audience that I believe is difficult to answer is “What are the red flags for an institution for residency and fellowship, besides the obvious things like sexism and racism, which has recently garnered a lot of national attention on Twitter?” Recently there has been a lot of chatter in social media about how an institution defines behavior that could be reflective of things not consistent with the institution's mission, and how do you handle that? Where do you start trying to tackle this particular aspect of encountering something that gives you pause? How do we interpret social media identities and not compromise promoting diversity and inclusion?

Diversity and Inclusion

Dr. Lee

We're very proud of our effort in diversity, equity, and inclusion, even though there is always more we can do. Our underrepresented minority students represent 27% of our entering class this year. Incidentally, since this is the SAAS meeting, I also want to mention the percentage of our Asian medical students is 41%, as compared to white students at 32%. We have invested a lot of resources and personnel in actively recruiting URM students and making them feel they belong at UT Southwestern. We have a great student inclusion program, not just for the medical school but also for the graduate school and Health Professions School as well. In the last few months, we have held several listening sessions that I participated in, along with our Associate Deans where the graduate students and the medical students could speak up and voice their concerns. We invited the campus police chief to these sessions so that he could address some of the concerns that were raised directly. And we have taken a lot of the feedback from the students, acted upon them, and maintained the communication so our efforts are sustained.

In the meantime, we continue to enhance our infrastructure for diversity, we've added two new leadership positions in the Dean's office for diversity and inclusion, because I firmly believe the way to address diversity and inclusion is not just to recruit more diverse individuals when they have already become candidates, but to enhance the pipeline of applicants. One of the things of which we took note is the stagnation of the number of African American men entering medicine. When you look at the surgical specialties such as mine (plastic and reconstructive surgery), there are very few underrepresented minority members. So it's not just recruiting diverse candidates, but we need to encourage our residents, our medical students, and even students at an earlier level to consider medicine, and in our case, consider surgery to enter our ranks. One of our faculty members began a program called Black Men in White Coats for African American male high school students. Our URM faculty attend special functions as role models to impress the students that medicine is very much a reachable goal for them, that they can get a lot of fulfillment from a career in medicine, and that there are resources to help them to enter the career. So I believe it takes a multifaceted and sustained effort for us to make progress in this area.

Advice for Early or Mid-career Academic Surgeons

Dr. Yip

I think those are really important points. It likely means everybody has a lot of work to do, and it is nice to hear some of the things that are happening. Do you have any tips or advice for somebody who is perhaps an early or mid-career faculty person for what can be done now to set yourself up for the future in today's virtual world?

Managing Your Time/pace

Dr. Zheng

I think one of the things that's been most challenging for me, as a mother of young children, is this fear of missing out during this virtual age because literally you could be on some sort of Zoom meeting or some sort of Grand Rounds every hour of every day. Every once in a while, I have to tell myself that I need to spend time with my kids, and it's okay to disengage and focus on my family. I would say that for the people out there who feel like they're falling behind, everybody is struggling with the same issues during this time, especially those of us who are parents. It is okay that you're doing things at your pace and not someone else's pace.

Dr. Dimick

For my closing comment, I'll agree with those words that you have to give yourself a break, and you have to pick and choose intentionally what you think is going to be the most high yield, and then just get rid of the F.O.M.O. for everything else. I think the two most valuable things you can do as a junior faculty is to create a community, whether it's locally, nationally, or internationally and then bring in expertise; and be creative about how you do that. Figure out how to use Twitter productively. But don't let social media rule you.

Finally, I just wanted to touch on the point that we talked about what's unprofessional. I think I'll sum it up by saying: don't be afraid to be your whole self. We want you to be your whole self and to come into our programs and enrich our programs with what is unique about you. Most surgical chairs in most programs will want that. There are important causes to advocate for and we want people who are change agents in our residency programs. So do not be afraid to engage in social justice in your social media. I can't speak for every chair, but I speak for all of those that I'm close with and I know that we want you to bring your whole self to American surgery.

Dr. Gosain

I agree with everything that has been said. I think that there is an opportunity to really embrace the pandemic, and the barriers that it's gotten rid of, as far as broadening your horizons. So, Dr. Dimick talked about how he spends a lot of time listening and consuming information. I think that for our trainees or faculty at any level, previous huge barriers have been time and money to travel and go to meetings and broaden your horizons, nationally or internationally, and I think some of those barriers are now gone. Because meetings are virtual there's a lot of content that's being put out by societies like ours and many others, in webinar formats that are free of charge and asynchronous. This is an opportunity to really broaden your horizons and identify what other societies are doing, including meetings you might not have gone to otherwise. Embrace this opportunity to really educate yourself, which will potentially change your perspective, both in your clinical practice and in your research program.

Dr. Wong

These are all great points, and I guess the only thing I would add is that I would embrace this as opportunity, especially if we're thinking about creating opportunities. It is a lot easier to attend virtual meetings, but it's also a lot easier to have virtual meetings. Dr. Dimick gave an example about doing research meetings with people from outside of their own institution and we should be able to do that for seminars and grand rounds. It really opens up an opportunity to increase the speaker pool which is a really great thing for people who may be at the point in their career where giving Grand Rounds would really make a difference for them professionally. Most of us are craving some content that's a little bit different and hearing from people who we don't normally hear from and meeting new people. While many of us were very optimistic that we'd be back to in person meetings, clearly for the foreseeable future we're going to be virtual. I know a lot of our medical students are thinking about doing their own conferences because they hunger for it too, and it is a great opportunity for them to plan meetings and to actually engage themselves and others as lectures and speakers.

Institutional Adaptation to COVID

Dr. Yip

Many are worried about meeting academic targets and feel that the pandemic is putting them behind. Dr. Lee, from aDean's perspective, could you provide examples of what those in leadership positions are doing to try to make any COVID-related allowances.

Dr. Lee

Like other institutions, we had to make rapid adjustments at the beginning of the pandemic including the closure of our research laboratory, which we now have ramped back up, as well as the closure of many non-therapeutic clinical trials. So we recognized very early on that some faculty members’ academic productivity progression may be slowed because of circumstances beyond their control. We instituted supplemental guidelines to our promotion criteria where faculty on the tenure track can apply for a one-year extension to their “tenure clock.” All such applications have been approved so rather than eight years, faculty who need an extra year will now get nine years to achieve tenure. Invited lectures to other institutions, and panel/paper presentation at national meetings that are cancelled due to the pandemic are still taken into account by our Promotion Committee. However, the criteria for promotion didn't change, and our promotion committee has continued to meet virtually through the pandemic season.

Dr. Brahmbhatt

One theme that has dominated our conversation today, is that the virtual world is clearly here to stay. There are definitely domains within every aspect of our academic lives that this could touch upon. Being mindful and deliberate about it clearly sounds like something that is of priority as this is ever evolving. The virtual world is something that will continue to interdigitate every aspect of our academic lives from the classroom, to the operating room, to the clinic, and to the conference room.

Table.

Summary points.

	Running a virtual meeting:
	Be prepared
	Encourage input from all participants
	High-end content
	Networking in a virtual world:
	Create and engage in local and national communities
	Be intentional and reach out to mentors and collaborators
	Include those who may be vulnerable such as students, residents, junior faculty
	Facilitates breaking down geographic barriers and may expand opportunities
Using social media:
	Engagement is important and an opportunity to fill in professional gaps