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BackgroundScientific conferences in the UK are attended by practising doctors and medical students for sharing research, networking and professional development. Student/trainee conferences are typically cheaper than professional conferences, but as they are not acknowledged in national scoring systems for medical and surgical training applications, they may have worse attendance than otherwise possible. We questioned whether student/trainee conferences are of a similar scientific quality to professional conferences, while being considerably cheaper.MethodsIn this cross-sectional database review, 162 conferences were identified through a systematic search of two conference databases by three independent researchers. χ2 tests were used to compare scientific quality between student/trainee and professional conferences and the likelihood of offering different types of discounts. Independent t-tests were employed to determine cost differences between the two categories of conferences.ResultsOur data revealed that there was no significant difference between student/trainee and professional conferences likelihood of declaring information on their abstract review processes (p=0.105). There was no difference in speaker seniority, determined by the tool the authors developed (p=0.172). Student/trainee conferences were significantly more likely to offer workshops (p<0.0005) and were cheaper than professional conferences (p<0.0005).ConclusionOur results show that student/trainee conferences offer a similar level of scientific quality to professional medical conferences in the UK at a fraction of the cost, which should be reflected within the national scoring systems.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has created an unprecedent crisis in United Kingdom and worldwide healthcare. Over the coming months, it is possible that up to 20% of the UK workforce could be selfisolating at any one point in time. 1 Rates of self-isolation may be considerably higher in UK healthcare workers due to transmissions in the healthcare setting. Emerging evidence from countries hard-hit by the pandemic like China, Italy and Spain has shown that some specialties will have particularly high infection rates due to their proximity of care with COVID-19 positive patients. The General Medical Council (GMC) and Chief Medical Officers of the four UK nations signed a joint statement saying that physicians may work across specialties so long as they are following GMC guidance on being a 'good doctor'. 2 Currently, there is no evidence of which medical specialties should be prioritised for working in specialties crucial for the care of COVID-19 patients. Therefore, the aim was to determine which doctors from 'filling specialties' could be prioritised to work in 'COVID-19 crucial specialties', such as intensive care medicine, acute internal medicine, infectious diseases, anaesthetics and emergency medicine.

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