Staying Virtual: A Survey Study of the Virtual Lecture Experience in Academic Medicine.

BACKGROUND: Increasing clinical demands can adversely impact academic advancement, including the ability to deliver lectures and disseminate scholarly work. The virtual lecture platform became mainstream during the height of the coronavirus-19 pandemic. Lessons learned from this period may offer insight into supporting academic productivity among physicians who must balance multiple demands, including high clinical workloads and family care responsibilities. We evaluated perceptions on delivering virtual lectures to determine whether virtual venues merit continuation beyond the pandemic's initial phase and whether these perceptions differ by gender and rank. METHODS: In a survey study, faculty who spoke in 1 of 3 virtual lecture programs in the Departments of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, Otolaryngology, and Radiology at a university hospital in 2020 to 2022 were queried about their experience. Speakers' motivations to lecture virtually and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of virtual and in-person lectures were analyzed using descriptive statistics and qualitative analyses. RESULTS: Seventy-two of 95 (76%) faculty members responded (40% women, 38% men, and 22% gender undisclosed). Virtual lectures supported the speakers "a lot" to "extremely" with the following goals: enhancing one's reputation and credibility (76%), networking (70%), receiving feedback (63%), and advancing prospects for promotion (59%). Virtual programs also increased the speakers' sense of accomplishment (70%) and professional optimism (61%) by at least "a lot," including instructors and assistant professors who previously had difficulty obtaining invitations to speak outside their institution. Many respondents had declined prior invitations to speak in-person due to clinical workload (66%) and family care responsibilities (58%). Previous opportunities to lecture in-person were also refused due to finances (39%), teaching (26%), and research (19%) requirements, personal medical conditions or disabilities (9%), and religious obligations (5%). Promotion was a stronger motivating factor to lecture virtually for instructors and assistant professors than for associate and full professors. By contrast, disseminating work and ideas was a stronger motivator for associate and full professors. Associate and full professors also reported greater improvement in work-related well-being than earlier career faculty from the virtual lecture experience. Very few differences were found by gender. CONCLUSIONS: Virtual lecture programs support faculty who might not otherwise have the opportunity to lecture in-person due to multiple constraints. To increase the dissemination of scholarly work and expand opportunities to all faculty, virtual lectures should continue even as in-person venues are reestablished.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy: a review.

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a relatively common disorder that anesthesiologists encounter among patients in the perioperative period. Fifty years ago, HCM was thought to be an obscure disease. Today, however, our understanding and ability to diagnose patients with HCM have improved dramatically. Patients with HCM have genotypic and phenotypic variability. Indeed, a subgroup of these patients exhibits the HCM genotype but not the phenotype (left ventricular hypertrophy). There are a number of treatment modalities for these patients, including pharmacotherapy to control symptoms, implantable cardiac defibrillators to manage malignant arrhythmias, and surgical myectomy and septal ablation to decrease the left ventricular outflow obstruction. Accurate diagnosis is vital for the perioperative management of these patients. Diagnosis is most often made using echocardiographic assessment of left ventricular hypertrophy, left ventricular outflow tract gradients, systolic and diastolic function, and mitral valve anatomy and function. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging also has a diagnostic role by determining the extent and location of left ventricular hypertrophy and the anatomic abnormalities of the mitral valve and papillary muscles. In this review on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy for the noncardiac anesthesiologist, we discuss the clinical presentation and genetic mutations associated with HCM, the critical role of echocardiography in the diagnosis and the assessment of surgical interventions, and the perioperative management of patients with HCM undergoing noncardiac surgery and management of the parturient with HCM.