We sought to evaluate the experience of the Mexican Association for Wound Care and Healing (AMCICHAC), a EWMA (European Wound Management Association) international partner organization, with webinar-based continuing academic education over a 2-year span (2021- 2023). Members of AMCICHAC are health care professionals (nurses, surgeons, physicians, etc) committed to the proper and state-of-the-art treatment of wounds.

A retrospective study was conducted in order to evaluate the experience of the AMCICHAC with webinar based academic education from December 2021 to December 2023. Webinars were conducted and provided free of charge for both members and non-members of the association. For webinar broadcast, we used the GoToWebinar software tool from GoTo (Boston, USA), which can accommodate up to 1500 participants. Stats were obtained with the GoTo statistics tool. Analysis was performed with SPSS software and Excel (Mac Edition). 

A total of 106 webinars were conducted in the study period. A total 83,131 health care providers attended the 106 webinars conducted over the 2-year span. On average, 784 participants attended each webinar. Mean duration of each webinar was 97.73 minutes. Mean real interest during the duration of each webinar was 94.54%. All webinars were conducted in Spanish. We believe that given the fact that most of our region shares the same language, it is straightforward for attendees to follow every single webinar. Even our colleagues from Brazil can follow the webinars, as it is well known that brazilian portuguese is quite similar to spanish. The approach of the Association has been to invite professors (lecturers) not only from Mexico (the country where the association is based), but also from countries such as Spain, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, among others. This permits to create a multidisciplinary and international collaboration network between nurses, surgeons, physicians, and other health care providers. Webinar-based education has proven to be an excellent choice to continue with the academic formation of health care professionals in a myriad of scenarios^1-4. 

We found that attendees were mainly from Mexico, Spain, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina and some other countries from the Caribbean and Central America. The main topics are aligned with those usually discussed at International Meetings such as the yearly EWMA Conference, with some of those including compression therapy, resource limited settings, correct use of topic, local and systemic antimicrobials, impaired wound healing, burns, interdisciplinary teamwork, pressure ulcers and chronic wounds. In our experience, webinars represent a popular and affordable continuing academic education option in the field of wound care and healing during the pandemic and beyond.

Funding

This article has not received any specific grants from public, commercial, or for-profit agencies.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

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