Vikas Majithia, MD, ON The Fellows of Pandemic: Learning on the Fly

In this video, Vikas Majithia, MD, talks about how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the fellows he oversees and how digital video platforms have allowed for consistent education. 

Vikas Majithia, MD, is professor of medicine, chief of the Division of Rheumatology, and fellowship program director at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, Mississippi.

TRANSCRIPT:

Vikas Majithia: I’m Vikas Majithia. I'm a rheumatologist in Mississippi. I work at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine, where I am the division director for rheumatology and also the fellowship program director. These are my experiences with the COVID-19 crisis.

The other things which have impacted us significantly has been the educational component of the fellowship. The fellows have transformed completely the virtual learning platform, and we no longer are conducting face-to-face meetings. That has had a positive impact and also some challenges which came by in trying to learn which platform works best.

Webex and Zoom have been the best like problems for us. We have discussed a lot of cases through them and people have learned how to share their screens. Yet, there seems to be a gap that has occurred during this time because face-to-face meeting just seem to generate a lot more interesting discussion and engagement. But nonetheless, this is what we have to do at this point.

We have also found that there have been a lot of people throughout the country who have stepped up. There is a group through the American College of Rheumatology … the number of program directors who are providing virtual learning, and all of our fellows have joined those conferences which are being held 3 times a week.

In addition, Dr Jack Kirsch in Dallas is offering free access to their and his webinars, so that has been an important area where other pieces have been put together to actually increase the educational component of it.

I'm also very proud of our fellows for stepping up to the plate, not only for taking care of our patients during this time, but also offering to help during in-patient needs as they come by.

Another important experience has been the difficulty in trying to figure out what would be the best way of managing these autoimmune patients during this time. But again, there have been a lot of discussions or message boards, as well as through the American College of Rheumatology and thought leaders who have given us their direction on how to manage and autoimmune disease patients during this crisis.

Thank you so much for watching.