Discussion
Since stepping into the digital world technological advances provide new
education platforms, and webinars are starting to gain popularity for
health professionals. While this process would take a decade if the
Covid-19 pandemic did not exist, the adaptation to digitalization took
place very quickly within 1 year as the pandemic affected the whole
world. Update and information sharing meetings, which are very important
for all healthcare professionals, especially physicians, were naturally
affected by this process. After physical seminars are stand overdue to
the Covid-19 pandemic for social distancing, the webinars are essential
for overcoming social distance for reaching information.
As far as we can reach and find, this study is the first in its kind in
the literature, showing audience behaviors that will help planning
future webinars. The webinars reached high view rates during the
pandemic. The health information seminars were started to shift to
online platforms, and the pandemic process is accelerated. The early
studies of webinars focus, especially on health professionals’
satisfaction and patients’ education (2,3). The authors concluded that
all learners intended to reduce their own cancer risk. Patients felt
more knowledgeable, prepared, and confident talking about cancer (2,3).
For health professionals (HP), the studies generally use the surveys to
investigate the results of webinars and showed that HP is satisfied and
significantly improved their information, and they would deal with the
webinar topics further (3–5). The education of the processes that can
be defined as the education of tomorrow have now been laid. Our study
demonstrated that the webinars are becoming the preferable site for
reaching information. We explore that the mean watch time slightly
increased when attractive topics or semi-live surgeries were
broadcasted. However, it still does not exceed 20% of the whole
broadcast period, which still seems too low.
The webinars are commonly promoting range 60 to 120 min (4). Our study
supported that results, and when the webinars prolonged 90 min, the
participants were started to leave. Additionally, the webinars shorter
than almost 80 min., we did not investigate any significant fall
pattern. Our study demonstrated that the time of leads was similar
between groups and suggested that the webinars must be as concise and
informative as much as it can be. We cannot interpret mean watch time,
the number of the audience after breaks because of our webinars had no
break.
The webinars reached top page views at the pandemic period after social
distancing dismiss page views nearly decreased before pandemic levels.
Furthermore, our suggestion is the webinar’s watch time increasing day
by day because of becoming reconciled to broadcasts. The time of
reaching maximum participants has come earlier in the pandemic era;
however, median watch time was similar between groups. To our guess,
watching broadcasts at a comfortable place with other visual stimulus
force participants to leave from webinars. In addition, it is necessary
to take into account the broadcasting problems due to technical problems
and the signal limitations in the country’s infrastructure.
Nevertheless, we have to say that webinar is more professional and
technical problems have rarely been occurs lately.
Recently, the adverse emotional effects of the pandemic have been
discussed. Especially the long working hours of healthcare
professionals, social separation from friends, and constant infection
also reduce employees’ wellbeing (6). It has been shown to reduce their
academic achievement. On the other hand, graduated healthcare
professionals are willing to keep themselves updated due to changing
treatment modalities and different approaches during the pandemic
period. We also think that this increase in the audience depends on this
in our study, but that webinars may not give the desired result because
they cannot find what they want or are not satisfied with the
presentations.
One of the significant limitations of this study is the lack of
evaluated participants’ satisfaction using surveys after webinars.
Another limitation of the study is no enough demographic data of a
considerable portion of participants because of using free access links.