Education
BOFAS ‘Lectures of Distinction’: Experience and lessons learned from the launch of a National Virtual Educational Programme in foot and ankle surgery Yaser Ghani, Tim Williams, Robert Clayton and Rick Brown
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Yaser Ghani is currently a Foot and Ankle Fellow at Imperial having completed his training on the Stanmore Rotation. His interest in medical education and surgical training led him to instigate the ‘Lectures of Distinction’ webinar series with BOFAS and he is now a member of the BOFAS Education Committee.
he global pandemic of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) significantly affected the working patterns of UK Higher Surgical Trainees with many reassigned to ‘COVID-19 rotas’. Face-to-face post-graduate surgical teaching was cancelled in line with the UK National Social Distancing policies. A survey of the UK orthopaedic trainees during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the majority of trainees felt that the most significant areas affected were the reduction in the operative experience and of post-graduate teaching. In response to this, the British Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society (BOFAS) Education Committee recognised the need to supplement the education of trainees and promptly designed a solution using online educational methods to develop a series of webinars covering the foot and ankle (F&A) topics of the FRCS Trauma and Orthopaedics (T&O) syllabus. These interactive weekly ‘BOFAS Lectures of Distinction’ (LoD) webinars are being delivered by leading F&A surgeons from the UK.
webinars was free of charge. It was presented as a video conference using ZoomTM for a maximum of 60 minutes in duration and included a didactic lecture lasting around 30 minutes, followed by an interactive session. The interactive component allowed the attendees to post questions, participate in live polls, case-based discussions (CBDs), or mock viva practice. The webinar series was advertised via Training Programme Directors (TPDs), BOFAS members, trainee network groups and social media. After each live attendance a link was emailed to collect both quantitative and qualitative feedback. The final feedback summary was emailed to the lecturer for quality control and annual appraisal. The webinar series was launched at the end of the first UK lockdown on the 6th July 2020 and continued until February 2021. The webinar was recorded and this was subsequently made available for free access on both the BOFAS website (www.bofas.org.uk/ clinician/webinars/lectures-of-distinction) and the BOFAS Education YouTube channel.
Our response the Lectures of Distinction
Tim Williams is a Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon at East Suffolk & North Essex Foundation Trust with a specialist interest in the Foot and Ankle. He is current secretary of the BOFAS Education Committee and moderator for the BOFAS ‘Lectures of Distinction’.
36 | JTO | Volume 09 | Issue 03 | September 2021 | boa.ac.uk
28 core topics of Foot and Ankle surgery were selected from the ISCP syllabus and the standard of lecture was set at the FRCS T&O level. The BOFAS Webinar Team invited leading F&A surgeons from around the UK and Ireland. One Royal College of Surgeons of England (RCSEng) Continued Professional Development (CPD) point was accredited to each webinar. Registration for the
Figure 1: Average feedback scores with 95% confidence intervals of the 28 lectures in each feedback domain.
