Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Medicine Grand Rounds attendance: a comparison of in-person and virtual conferences.

BACKGROUND: Many academic medical centers transitioned from in-person to virtual conferences due to the COVID pandemic, but the impact on faculty attendance is unknown.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate changes in attendance at Medicine Grand Rounds (MGR) following the transition from an in-person to virtual format and as a function of the COVID census at Vanderbilt Medical Center.

METHODS: Faculty attendee characteristics were obtained from Department of Medicine records. Attendance was recorded using a text message-based system. Daily COVID census was recorded independently by hospital administration. The main attendance metric was proportion of eligible faculty that attended each MGR. Comparisons were made for the entire cohort and for individual faculty.

RESULTS: The observation period was March 2019-June 2021 and included 101 MGR conferences with more than 600 eligible faculty. Overall attendance was unchanged during the in-person and virtual formats (49% vs 51%; P = .44) and did not change significantly during a surge in COVID census. Individual faculty member attendance rates varied widely. Absolute differences between formats were less than -20% or greater than 20% for one-third of faculty. Pulmonary/Critical Care faculty attendance increased during the virtual format compared to in-person (55% vs 49%; P < .001). A cloud-based digital archive of MGR lectures was accessed by < 1% of faculty per conference.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall faculty attendance at MGR did not change following the transition to a virtual format regardless of COVID census, but individual attendance habits fluctuated in a bi-directional manner. Incentivizing use of a digital archive may represent an opportunity to increase faculty consumption of MGR.