SNI/SNI Digital-Baghdad neurosurgery educational series

Abstract

Background: Access to high-quality neurosurgery online learning is limited in low- and middle-income countries, and Iraq is part of this category. The need for collaboration and connection of people worldwide to exchange ideas and experiences in neurosurgery is a challenge. Surgical Neurology International® (SNI)/SNI Digital stimulated the establishment of the joint effort to bring the discussion about the best experiences in neurosurgery from the United States and Iraq together in an internet meeting format. Methods: An online survey was formulated and distributed to the attendees of the SNI-Baghdad neurosurgery meetings. The survey investigates the last 14 consecutive meetings for the period May/2021–April/2022. The online survey was designed utilizing Google Forms. The survey outline includes demographics, general aspects of the meetings, research aspects, surgical anatomy, neuroradiology, and capacity-building aspects. All these sections of the survey used a 5-point Likert scale. Results: The total number of participants was 84 out of 115 sent, with a response rate of 73.1%. The participants were diverse as they ranged from medical students to attending neurosurgeons. The male-to-female ratio was 1:1. Most attendees were from Baghdad (n = 66 [77.6%]) and the highest number of the responders was from the University of Baghdad (n = 46 [54.1%]). Conclusion: The targeted online collaborative meetings, SNI-Baghdad neurosurgery meeting as an example, give an insight into the effectiveness of such methods in providing a mutually beneficial educational experience between people of different parts of the world, as assessed by a survey initiated and performed by the attendees.

Academic productivity of Iraqi medical students in the field of neurosurgery: A literature review

“…Table 1 shows the productivity of Iraqi medical students with their publications' number and type of authorship. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]28,[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][39][40][41][42][43][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]…”

“…Furthermore, a possible explanation for increasing medical students’ publications in neurosurgery in 2022 is Surgical Neurology International ® (SNI ® )-Baghdad neurosurgical online meetings. [ 41 , 52 ] These are monthly meetings held online between the SNI editorial board and medical students, residents, and neurosurgeons from Iraq. The meetings started in the middle of 2021 and are still continuous indefinitely.…”

“…In the survey of these meetings, more than 60% of participants reported increases in their overall capacity to conduct research. [ 52 ] Moreover, the content of the meetings, which include presentations and discussions of various neurosurgical topics, is triggering for formulating ideas for research. A significant number of projects started in 2021 and got published in 2022.…”

“…Mustafa Ismail [2][3][4]6,7,9,12,16,24,32,[48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]58,59,72] 22 9 first author\13 co-author Aktham O. Al-Khafaji [2,5,9,10,15,19,23,31,34,37,41,45,52,53,56] 15 3 first author\12 co-author Saja A. Albanaa [10,20,21,22,35,37,39,40,42,43,46] 11 1 first author\10 co-author Teeba A. Adnan [2,4,6,7,…”

Role of a medical student neuro-society organized neurosurgical conference: The Glasgow neuro experience

“…[28] Similarly, SNIDigital also includes work by Ausman and Hoz, where they already demonstrated the potential of such an initiative and its role in inspiring the next generation of neurosurgeons amongst medical students based on work from Ausman and Hoz involving medical students and Iraq. [1,[17][18][19]28] Initiatives like SNIDigital may then be the ideal solution to our experience [Figure 3] where students are generally less interested in didactic lectures and more desirous of workshops and discussions which are interactive experiences.…”