This year's Board Review Course, August 25-28, 2020, is one for the history books! Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, ACMT staff and event organizers had to quickly transition the Board Review Course into a virtual activity, while still maintaining the high-level educational content and access to study materials that our attendees have come to expect. With the patience and flexibility of our speakers, ACMT came up with a "simulive" model where lectures were pre-recorded to reduce technical issues on day-of, speakers responded to attendees in the chat feature in real-time, and then speakers joined the session for an interactive Q&A with a moderator at the end. ACMT now knows that this model has become the industry standard for virtual events -- we chose wisely! In addition to the "simulive" format during the live event, for the first time ever, ACMT made the recording of sessions on-demand so that attendees could view the material at their convenience. ACMT made this exception in response to the extraordinary times we are all living in and with an understanding that many attendees would have clinical duties or family obligations during the pandemic that required this sort of flexibility. 

The event had a total attendance of 223, which makes it the largest Board Review Course in ACMT’s history. While there were the inevitable technical glitches expected with a virtual event, the overall response to the event was largely positive. In our Event Survey, 95% of respondents rated the event as “Very Good” or “Excellent” and 98% said they would recommend the event to others. Here are a few of the survey comments:

• “I think this virtual conference worked well and was better than previous virtual meetings I've attended. Thank you for the hard work during the pandemic!”
• “It was nice to have the talks start on time regardless of how long questions went. Even though the lectures were pre-recorded (which was a good idea) and everyone was remote, still felt a sense of community with a live questions/chat during the lectures.”
• “Best review yet.”

Thank you to organizers Evan Schwarz, Michael Levine, and Michele Burns, and a special thank you to all the Board Review Course speakers for helping to make this event such a big success!