Learning Objectives:

To establish the prevalence of Internet video usage for self-education.

To determine the most used sites.

To ascertain how trainees and trainers assess the quality of individual videos.

Introduction: Internet based videos are increasingly used throughout medical education. We wished to investigate the use of Internet videos for personal education in otological surgical training both in the UK and internationally.

Method: A short questionnaire was constructed to assess the use of Internet videos for education in otological surgery. It was distributed to participants at two temporal bone courses: a regional ENT registrar course held in the UK and an international course held in France.

Results: 21 delegates completed surveys at each course. All responders in the UK were UK based registrars. The international cohort comprised 14 European and 7 non-European delegates. Use of Internet videos for personal education was very high in both groups - 76% and 90% respectively. 42% of the international cohort used videos for pre-course preparation. Delegates reported using their own judgment to access video quality (94% and 73%) whilst 5% in the international group looked for names with an international reputation. The most used site was YouTube.

Conclusion: Internet videos are an effective and often free source of educational material. Use of this resource is increasing globally across all surgical specialties. The quality of videos available is variable and other than personal assessment there remains no way to determine the standard of videos accessed.