Excellence Available Everywhere: The Virtual Pathology Grand Rounds Experience

Introduction/Objective Grand Rounds seminars are a cornerstone of scholarship in allacademic departments They provide education, stimulatediscussion, and build faculty reputation The COVID-19 pandemicled to cancellations in teaching conferences and lost opportunitiesfor all of the above starting in March 2020 The social medialhashtag #VirtualPathGR and @VirtualPathGR Twitter (SanFrancisco, CA) accounts (VPGR) were created to address a need forcontinued engagement in academic pathology, during and afterperiods of physical distancing Methods #VirtualPathGR was first used on March 21, 2020 to assess interestin a VPGR format Six pathologists organized a social-media basedplatform, utilizing video conferencing Zoom (San Jose, CA) was selected because it is free and easy to use A committee developedcriteria for inviting hosts and speakers, developed a logo and template for announcements and promoted VPGR Potentialspeakers were selected initially via self-nomination and subsequently by selections from the VPGR board Free pre-registration was required to minimize risk of disruption bymalicious actors Academic institutions served as “hosts” similarto traditional GR, and the speaker was introduced by one of theVPGR board members Evaluations were sent to participants viathe chat function in Zoom Lectures were recorded and archivedvia YouTube (San Bruno, CA) Results As of May 1, #VirtualPathGR has 2 6 million impressions and theTwitter account has 808 followers From April 2 to May 1, fiveVPGR were held with 1,720 registrations (average 344 per event)and 829 Zoom attendees overall (average 165 per event) 4separate academic host institutions were involved and speakersincluded Assistant to Full Professors Participants from 16different countries attended the live sessions The archived talkshave been viewed 954 times via YouTube VPGR received support from the American Society for Clinical Pathology (Chicago, IL), leading to a partnership to provide CME credit Conclusion VPGR serves as strong proof of concept of the ability and demandfor high quality academic pathology talks to be given remotely VPGR promotes academic engagement and provides career-building opportunities by partnering with host universities Whileremote learning comes with challenges, VPGR shows that thepathology community can harness the power of remotetechnologies to enhance learning across the world, now and in thefuture