Presentations in the setting of a Pandemic

Over the past few weeks, our residency has undergone unprecedented challenges with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic. We appreciate that the IM residency leadership team has worked tirelessly to ensure residents are practicing in the safest conditions possible despite many limitations and that we are kept informed of the ever changing landscape of providing healthcare at our institution. Given the inherent uncertainty surrounding the effects of this pandemic for not only our patients but also ourselves, our families, and our loved ones, it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus on anything other than the life threatening pandemic. As we find ourselves coping with this new level of stress, we seek ways to alleviate undue anxiety in as many avenues as possible.

We as adult learners are taking the initiative to educate ourselves on the evolving pandemic and how best to care for our patients and ourselves. This learning takes place in the hospital, as well as at home, taking away from time typically spent on these educational conferences. At this point in time, we are asking for non-essential resident-lead presentations to be placed on hold.

The signatures on this petition represent support of the following measures:

• We ask that senior talks be canceled until the end of the year. A resident could choose to give a presentation if they are passionate about a topic and have prepared a presentation on a web based platform. These can be scheduled on a case by case basis, with web based or asynchronous learning models encouraged.
• We recognize that journal club carries important educational value for both the presenters and the audience. With this in mind, we propose continuing the journal club conference (using the new zoom platform), but with the added allowance that residents have the option of rescheduling or deferring their journal club if they have had significant inpatient rotation load or are unable to prepare a presentation due to the stress imposed by COVID-19 and associated patient care.
• We are more than willing to work with the chiefs and IM leadership to develop ways in which to solicit volunteer effort from residents who are at home and have the bandwidth and enthusiasm to continue contributing to resident lead presentations.

Thank you for working alongside us and with us during this trying time. We appreciate your consideration! 

BIDMC IM SAR Class    Contact the author of the petition