Endocrine Abstracts

Background: Learning through various online platforms is very common nowadays and its popularity has increased especially during the pandemic period. Nowadays, medical professionals are turning more than ever to online education through available online books, websites, and various online platforms. The aim of this study was to show that virtual training can improve the knowledge and confidence of young endocrinologists.

Methods: The Croatian Section for Young Endocrinologists organised the 2nd Regional Online Symposium for Young Endocrinologists in November 2021 for the purpose of continuing education and knowledge sharing among young endocrinologists from the region. The theme of the symposium was ‘Endocrinopathies in Pregnancy.’ The symposium started with an introductory test with 18 questions. At the end of the symposium, we administered the same test to see how much the participants had learned and improved their knowledge. The test also served as feedback for the organisers to see how good each presentation was and if there was room for improvement. The anonymous test consisted of 18 questions from 5 areas of endocrinology (pituitary, adrenal, diabetes and metabolism, calcium and bone metabolism, and thyroid).

Results: A total of 53 subjects participated in the introductory test and 37 subjects in the final test. There was a statistically significant difference in resolution between the introductory and final tests for 8 of the 18 questions. Baseline knowledge, based on the joint median of correct answers from a domain, was 24% in the pituitary area, 29% in the calcium and bone area, 46% in the adrenal area, 49% in the diabetes and metabolism area, and 59% in the thyroid area. There were statistically significant improvements in the final test (from greatest to least improvement) for the area of calcium and bone (all 3 questions achieved statistically significant improvement), then pituitary (2/3 questions achieved statistically significant improvement), thyroid (2/2 questions achieved statistically significant improvement), diabetes, and metabolism (1/4 question achieved statistically significant improvement), whereas there were no statistically significant differences in resolution between the introductory and final tests for the adrenal (0/4) area.

Conclusion: Online education is a very widely used and good learning model to improve and transfer the knowledge of young physicians and scientists. Different models of online learning need to be promoted and implemented in daily practise.