Update from the American Urological Association's Residents and fellows committee.

Abstract

The American Urological Association’s (AUA) Residents and Fellows committee, since its inception in 2002, represents the voice of trainee members of the AUA. Over the past few years, the committee has been investigating issues surrounding parental leave among US residents. Through the help of the AUA our committee developed a survey [1]. We found that 1 in 4 residents have children and 80% of those residents had a child during residency. We also found that 78% of residents took <2 weeks off after the birth of their child. Currently, there is no national American Board of Urology (ABU) policy for trainees [2, 3]. Our committee has had the opportunity to interface with the ABU to express concerns surrounding the lack of parental leave policy for trainees. Over the past year, the ABU has worked with the numerous stakeholders to develop a standardised parental leave policy that will be put into place this July. Residents will be allowed to take 6 weeks of parental leave without affecting vacation or sick leave and without an extension of training. Additionally, residents will be allowed an additional 2–4 weeks of leave depending on their year of training. This policy effectively will provide 8–10 weeks of parental leave. Our committee has offered full support for ABU’s pending policy and appreciation for their acknowledgement of parental leave as an issue critical to trainees. Most recently, over the past year our committee also worked to support residents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Urology residents were faced with uncertainty on a daily basis during the pandemic with decreased inpatient, outpatient, and surgical volumes [4]. Additionally, didactics were disrupted and residents were redeployed to COVID units. Collaborative efforts for urology resident education emerged across the country. One of the first initiatives was the UCSF Urology COViD (Urology Collaborative Online Virtual Didactics) lecture series [5]. Similarly, residents from the New York Section of the AUA created the Educational Multi-institutional Program for Instructing Residents (EMPIRE) lecture series [6]. These lectures provided critical didactic education that was suddenly absent from residency training. Topics spanned the breadth of urology and experts across the country volunteered to be presenters. The virtual educational series did more than just replace missing didactics, they presented a novel opportunity for a more interconnected national resident education program. These virtual education series derived their success from several factors. First, they met a widespread demand for easily accessible educational opportunities during the pandemic. Second, using teleconference platforms, the lectures maintained a sense of interactivity through live question and answer sessions and audience surveys. Alternatively, recordings of these sessions provided flexibility for learning. Third, by addressing a wide variety of topics, learners could tailor their experience around their interests. And finally, informal ‘mentoring sessions’ with each speaker before the lectures provided timely insights and career advice for residents and students. The creation of a digital library of urology lectures and the collaboration necessary to rise to these challenging times will likely have long-lasting effects. The challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity for an entirely interconnected urology resident cohort. Will urology residents be inspired to pursue fellowship after increased exposure to subspecialists? Could this serve as the foundation to create a national resident mentorship program? Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic the work of the AUA Residents and Fellows Committee has continued and our constituency is more connected than ever. The authors have no relevant interests to disclose.