JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Due to the influence of COVID-19 pandemic, conventional face-to-face academic conferences were restricted, and many of the conferences had moved online.

Objective:

To investigate the virtual conferences of urology under the COVID-19 pandemic and provide suggestions for better organization of them.

Methods:

A cross-sectional survey was conducted from May 30, 2020 to June 15, 2020 in China. Our team designed a 23-items questionnaire to investigate the conferences of urology under the COVID-19. IPSS 22.0 was applied to analyze the data collected.

Results:

A total of 330 Chinese urologists participated in our survey and the response rate was 90% (330/368). Among the participants, 40.91% (135/330) of them were associate chief physicians. The proportion of participants who took part in conventional face-to-face academic conferences decreased from 92.73% (306/330) before the COVID-19 pandemic to 22.12% (73/330) during the pandemic. In contrast, the proportion of urologists who took part in virtual conferences increased from 69.69% (229/330) to 90% (297/330). Most of the urologists (70.71%, 210/297) chose to take part in the virtual meetings at home and thought that a meeting lasted for 1-2hours was most appropriate. 73.74% (219/297) of the urologists reported that they could take part in the virtual meetings smoothly while the rest of them reported that they had ever experienced lags in video and audio streaming during the virtual conference. When comparing conventional face-to-face with virtual conferences, 70.71% (210/297) of them thought both of them were acceptable while 17.85% (53/297) preferred virtual conferences and 11.45% (34/297) preferred conventional face-to-face meetings.

Conclusions:

Virtual conferences were booming under the COVID-19 pandemic, but there were still many aspects that could be improved for better organization of them.