Like much of the rest of the world, the UK has been in various stages of lockdown for over a year now due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This has been a time of unprecedented change for everybody - we have all had to adapt to new ways of living our lives and for many people, working from home has become the new norm.

At Fortius, we have remained open as normal throughout the past year for consultation, diagnosis and treatment. However, lockdown meant we were not able to host our usual array of monthly educational events at The King’s Fund in London, where our consultants could share their expert knowledge with Physiotherapists and GPs on a variety of topics.

Our annual education programme is something that we pride ourselves on at Fortius, so we decided to continue our events schedule as live Zoom webinars which people could enjoy from the comfort of their homes. Our first webinar last April was about football injuries and was hosted by Consultant in Sports Medicine and Rheumatology Dr Jon Houghton.

Since then, we have held a webinar at least once a month and they have proved to be a successful alternative to our face-to-face events. Attendance has been strong throughout the year, with the online environment allowing a worldwide audience to join in, including GPs and Physiotherapists from countries ranging from Spain to Nigeria, and Australia to Italy.

Interaction between the consultants who are presenting and the attendees is key. Thanks to Zoom’s Q&A and chat functions, consultants have still been able to answer and fully discuss any questions. As well as providing informative and professional presentations, our consultants have encouraged interaction with their audience by including surveys and open questions for attendees to consider.

Although we look forward to welcoming everyone back in person to our educational events at some stage, we will be continuing our online webinars for the foreseeable future.

Interested in joining us for our next live webinar? You can keep an eye on all of our upcoming educational events and webinars here.