Report on the 19th ECCO IBD Intensive Course for Trainees, Virtual 2021
Kostas Karmiris, EduCom Member
 Kostas Karmiris © ECCO |
The 19th IBD Intensive Course for Trainees was held virtually on July 2, one week before the ECCO Congress, as part of the educational programme.
This oldest and most established course took place once again this year, although in a virtual design, and was attended by a total of 100 physicians from 33 countries from Europe and elsewhere. The course offered a comprehensive update on IBD and provided pivotal insights into the medical management for IBD patients in an interactive manner.
The programme was divided into two sections. The morning session was dedicated to formal frontal lectures. It started with a comprehensive integrative talk on the epidemiology and immunopathogenesis of IBD, followed by nine concise practical talks on each of the currently available treatment strategies but also on medication in the pipeline. The afternoon ‘round table’ session aimed to encourage interaction and discussion in small groups. Setting it up was a challenge because of the virtual character of the course. It took the format of 14 ‘meet the expert’ webinar-like sessions running in parallel during which attendees (six or seven per group) remained in the same virtual room while the instructors rotated every 15 minutes. Each participant had the opportunity to learn and discuss seven different topics coupled with practical IBD cases and dilemmas. The topics were carefully selected, covering pregnancy in IBD, extra-intestinal manifestations, when and how to start biologics, complications associated with anti-TNFα therapy, therapeutic drug monitoring, exit strategies and therapeutic endoscopy in IBD. Discussions allowed integration of the knowledge gained during the morning sessions with practical day-to-day aspects of care.
The faculty was given the task of interacting with the trainees. Despite the technical difficulties associated with the virtual set up, participants showed lots of interest throughout the course, with many questions and lively discussions. The course slides and presentations are available for members via the e-CCO Learning Platform.
The faculty was given the task of interacting with the trainees, and there was lots of interest, questions and lively discussions throughout the course. The course layout (the slides and presentations) will be available for members via the e-CCO Learning Platform.
The overall evaluation of the course showed a high level of satisfaction among the participants, with a score of 4,41/5. 21 particularly expressed satisfaction with the round table case-based discussions and the direct interaction with the faculty. From the online and direct feedback, it is evident that the future course format should include an overview on the positioning of different therapeutic strategies and the management algorithm.
I would like to thank the members of the ECCO Office for their hard work in organising this course in a challenging environment, as well as the contributing speakers and faculty who made the course so successful. Finally, I wish to thank my colleagues on EduCom for their time, energy and investment.
On behalf of the ECCO Educational Officer: Fernando Magro
On behalf of the ECCO Educational Committee: Henit Yanai (Chair), Paulo Kotze, Marietta Iacucci, Christian Maaser, Pierre Ellul
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