Zoom option proves a success for international event

As UNMC shifts into online mode, an international grand rounds was held at the end of March that used Zoom to pull in more than 230 attendees from the U.S., Brazil, Peru and Norway.

The online event, which included case presentations, a video surgery presentation and paper presentations, was delivered by UNMC professors in Omaha and researchers for the Federal University of São Paulo Medical School in Brazil, as well as one presenter in Norway.

Due to the locations of the presenting physicians, the event was always intended to be online, but when social distancing went into effect, organizer Vinicius De Stefano, M.D., a resident at the Truhlsen Eye Institute and the UNMC Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, moved the event to the Zoom platform.

“We initially were concerned about compatibility, but everybody now is using Zoom,” he said.

“In the end, we ended up getting many more people than we were originally expecting, because our colleagues in Brazil were marketing it to their alumni and people who were not in São Paulo, who wouldn’t normally be present in the auditorium,” he said. “By using Zoom, the whole country was able to log in — and it was the same way here.”

Despite the size of the virtual audience, discussion and questions from the audience went well, Dr. De Stefano said.

“We had a moderator both here and in Brazil, and they were checking the chat and making sure relevant questions were being answered,” he said. “People were aware of how many people were in the meeting, and they were only trying to talk at appropriate times.

“We were able to have good discussion and constructive feedback.”

Dr. De Stefano advises other meeting organizers not to be afraid of big Zoom meetings, though he did say having a moderator at each location and a designated mechanism for asking questions, such as the chat feature, is important to having a thoughtful discussion.

“If you get that set, it can be very successful.”