VIR Virtual Shadowing

Why be a student moderator?

Thank you for your interest in being a student moderator for these virtual shadowing sessions! This initiative would not be successful without passionate & motivated aspiring interventional radiologists like yourselves. You'll find that the student shadows really appreciate the opportunity that you are helping provide for them.

We want you to receive recognition for the work you do to ensure these sessions run smoothly. To do this, we publically thank you on our website and post from our official twitter ( @virshadowing ) about your session. As you may know, the VIR community (and medicine as a whole) is very active on twitter. This will start to get our name out to the community and start to build your brand in the field.

Also, helping with this initiative counts as a Reserves project that you worked on for the SIR MSC, through the VIR Interest Group Committee (VIRIG). If you would like to join the MSC as an official committee member, participation in projects like this is a must. Your work on this project will be recorded and can be highlighted when it comes time to apply for an official committee position!

Program information

This project is a partnership between the West Coast VIR (WCVIR) symposium and the Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) Medical Student Council (MSC) and Resident/Fellows/Students (RFS), to offer students the opportunity to shadow physicians in this amazing specialty. This pilot project currently is currently hosted by WCVIR and run by SIR RFS volunteers. We plan to transition it to be fully hosted the SIR in 2023.

The West Coast VIR Symposium organization will certify all virtual shadowing hours for students that attend and abide by the following program syllabus.

Syllabus >

As a student moderator, you must complete five steps to successfully run a session:

1) Recruit an resident/attending "mentor"

This can be any resident or attending that you may know that you feel would be a great mentor to introduce students to the field of IR! We recommend starting with someone at your home institution or someone you have a personal connection with.

Sample Email to Mentors #1

Sample Email to Mentors #2

Hello Dr. ___,

Are you interested in medical education and providing mentorship? The SIR MSC is looking for enthusiastic fellows and residents interested in contributing to the education of pre-med undergraduate and pre-clinical medical students in IR by hosting a “virtual shadowing” session!

These sessions consist of a small group (approximately 5-10 students) case review and discussion, followed by a short Q&A, all done over Zoom. Each session will also have an SIR MSC member available, who will provide assistance and support both before and during the session.

Our primary reason for starting this project is that not enough pre-medical and medical students have exposure to Interventional Radiology. We believe that early exposure and access to mentors can be instrumental in career success.

To participate, we would ask that you prepare a set of slides from a memorable case including clinical presentation, pre-op labs/imaging, procedure summary, and post-op follow-up. The planned duration for this session is 1 hour. The MSC moderator will be happy to help you prepare/organize the slides and help tailor the content to the audience training level.

As an MSC member, I’d be happy to moderate a session for you! I’m currently available on :

- Date/Time 1
- Date/Time 2
- Date/Time 3

Feel free to visit our website http://virshadowing.com/mentors for more information. Please let me know if you are interested in participating and if any of those dates work for you. I am also available to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you for your support!

2) Plan your event

Once you have your mentor, work with them to prepare the virtual shadowing sessions.

Schedule	Find a 1 hour time slot that works for both you and your mentor. Ideal times are weekend afternoon/evenings 3PM-6PM Pacific (6PM-9PM Eastern).
Audience	Decide between the two of you whether you prefer to have an audience of pre-meds or early medical students. (Pre-meds preferred)
Post!	Post the event on virshadowing.com using your moderator portal. All shadow sign-ups must be done through virshadowing.com for record keeping and to keep the total number of shadows per session to manageable levels.
Case	Help the mentor to prepare a 30 minute case presentation accessible to your audience. See the syllabus for more details about what information this case presentation must require. Be sure to be flexible with the mentor's busy schedule!
Study	Review the topic to prepare to moderate the session

3) Publicize your event

Once submitted, the event will be automatically featured on virshadowing.com. Our team will email our undergrad list-serves and tweet about the event. Usually shadowing events fill up quickly and end up with wait-lists. You can monitor signups on your moderator portal and are welcome to advertise the session as you see fit! Remember that shadows must sign-up through virshadowing.com.

4) Moderate your session

The big day approaches! Here are your final responsibilities.

Send out Zoom links	A few days before the session, create and send out a Zoom link to all attendees on your moderator portal. In your email, request that the shadows reply with an email confirmation. Please do not send out the Zoom link to anyone not on the virshadowing.com sign-up
Check Waitlists	Check periodically to see if any shadows have come off the wait-list due to cancellations. Make sure they have access to the Zoom link.
Introductions	On the big day, start your Zoom link early and welcome the shadows as they arrive. Encourage them to introduce themselves briefly and ask what they hope to get out of the event, this is useful information for you and the mentor. Then introduce the mentor with a prepared brief statement, and prompt them to begin the case review.
Prepare a quiz	Create a short quiz for the shadows that will be used to certify their participation in the session. These questions should be relatively straight forward and relate to major ideas brought up in the case discussion. We recommend using forms.google.com to write a 5 question quiz with simple free response answers. At the end of the session, send the shadows the link to the quiz. Shadows must pass (at least 70%) this quiz to receive shadowing credit. They are allowed to consult outside sources, but must answer in their own words.
Moderate	Strongly encourage all shadows to have their webcams on throughout the entire session and to participate in the Q&A. Use your best judgment to mute/kick shadows that are causing a disturbance.
Participate in the chat	During the case review, be live in the chat answering questions and defining medical jargon that you feel may be unfamiliar to the students. Finally, it will be up to you to moderate the Q&A session.

Sample Email to Shadows

5) Record attendance and credit

Once the session is over and the quiz is administered, email us a list of all attendees and their performance on the quiz. Then, record those that got over 70% on the quiz in the moderator portal to assign shadowing credit to those students! After this is done, your session is complete!

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! You can reach us at info@virshadowing.com!

Student Moderatorsfor Virtual Shadowing in VIR

Why be a student moderator?

Program information

Our team

Student Moderators
for Virtual Shadowing in VIR