Background: Poor noon conference attendance is a universal problem across residency programs, particularly for inpatient rotations. Residents commonly face the decision to either attend a conference or continue their work on busy services. Food incentives, mandatory attendance standards, or implementation of consequences for absences are largely ineffective. Conversely, a study suggests that lecture topics and choice of speaker promote attendance. Although evidence does not demonstrate a direct correlation between conference attendance and test scores, the ACGME mandates conference attendance in all accredited residencies. Therefore, identifying effective strategies to enhance attendance remains a priority.
Purpose: We aim to prove that increasing the number of resident-led lectures increases overall noon conference attendance by internal medicine residents.
Description: Invitations to lectures were sent to PGY2s and PGY3s of a medium-sized internal medicine program. 6 resident-led lectures, under advisement from faculty mentors, were scheduled over 1 month. The number of resident-led lectures was compared to the same month 1 year prior. Attendance data was obtained from New Innovations in July of 2024 and compared to July of 2023. Excused absences were excluded in the calculation of conference attendance. This data was limited to current PGY2s and PGY3s for comparison. Additionally, an anonymous questionnaire utilizing 5-point Likert Scales was designed to understand residents’ perceptions of resident-led lectures.
Conclusions: Resident-led lectures increased by 200%. Overall attendance in July of 2023 was 85.6%, while overall attendance in July of 2024 was 67.9%, a 17.8% decrease in attendance year over year. The questionnaire had 19 respondents. 63.2% of residents answered ‘very likely’ when asked if they were more likely to attend a resident-led lecture. 57.9% of residents considered resident-led lectures ‘very important’. Lastly, 57.9% rated these lectures as a ‘5, with 5 representing the highest quality, and 1 representing the lowest. Improving noon conference attendance remains a challenge, and new strategies are needed. Little attention has been paid to utilizing a near-peer approach. To our knowledge, ours is the first study to analyze the effect of increasing resident-led lectures on noon conference attendance. Our results indicate that attendance decreases as resident lectures increase. However, most residents have a favorable opinion of them and expressed that they would be more likely to attend resident lectures. We should acknowledge that data collection occurred shortly after July 2024, and many residents had not yet corrected their number of excused absences; the number of excused absences was higher in July 2023. Additionally, the results may be subject to bias as the small sample size could cause hesitance to share negative opinions. Although Likert scales were used to quantify perceptions, they may not fully capture individual experiences, which might be better explored via qualitative methods. While increasing resident-led lectures may not represent a promising strategy to bolster attendance we believe there is value in these lectures outside of influencing attendance, including providing residents exposure to medical education, and allowing opportunity to create relationships with faculty members. Brief Description
