The benefits of virtual learning webinars to both low‐ and high‐income countries

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has brought about many changes in the relationships between high‐income countries and partner organisations in low‐ or low–middle‐income countries, such as predominate in sub‐Saharan Africa. Medicine, surgery and in particular urology is no exception to the changes that COVID‐19 has demanded. Urolink represents the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) on the global urology stage and has been deleteriously impacted by the pandemic. Education, one of the pillars of Urolink’s founding philosophies, has conventionally been delivered by face‐to face teaching, training, or mentoring by UK urologists at their host’s site outside of the UK. As a consequence of the inability to travel due to the pandemic, BAUS Urolink has evolved a virtual on‐line webinar package evolved by, and delivered between, urologists in Lusaka, Zambia, and various centres in the UK. The aim was to deliver curricular‐based educational topics to trainees in both countries. This programme has generated a number of live webinars and archived recordings during the pandemic that has proven accessible and educationally acceptable to trainees in the UK and Zambia. This webinar series has also generated relationships between young urologists on different continents, given each a different view of healthcare delivery outside of their country of origin at no appreciable cost, and would appear to be an educational mechanism that is durable for, and applicable to, a wider participation in the post‐pandemic world.

Towards a Virtual “Global Academia of Surgeons”

“…8 In this context, the broad introduction of e-learning concepts has revealed unprecedented potential and unforeseen opportunities. Thus, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was an important lesson that the shift from face-to-face classes to virtual classrooms and webinars did not lead to a noticeable reduction in learning quality, 9 and consequently, there are strong predictions that e-learning will persist as an important educational tool in the postpandemic world. 10 Furthermore, experts predict that future e-learning concepts will evolve away from what is commonly called "blended learning"; that is, from providing support or supplement to standard lecture-hall-teaching.…”