P0683 How do residents fund their participation in conferences? A French national web-based survey Nathan Peiffer-Smadja*1, Michael Thy1,2, Thomas Hanslik3, Redwan Maatoug4, Salam Abbara5

1 Diderot , Hospital Bichat-Claude Bernard, PARIS, , 2 University Paris Descartes, Hôpital Necker, Paris, France, 3 Université de Versailles Saint Quentin, Ambroise Paré Hospital, Versailles, France, 4 University Pierre et Marie Curie, Hospital Pitié - Salpétrière, Paris, France, 5 Pasteur Institute, UMR 1181, INSERM, Paris, France Background: Residents are encouraged to participate in medical conferences. However, there are few data on the funding of their participation that includes transportation, housing and conference registration. We present the results of a French national web-based survey on the funding of residents attending medical conferences. Materials/methods: We sent a web-based form to French residents using several networks: the national networks of specialists (e.g. the RéJIF, French Young ID network), the local networks of residents in every region of France and the university networks of residents. The form collected demographics questions, detailed funding data for the last attended conference and data for the previous conferences. We analyzed the results using R software. Results: The survey was completed by 1355 French residents, representing every French region. The median age of residents was 28 years (IQR 26-29) and 56% of the respondents were women. The last attended conference was in France for 1218 residents (90%), in Europe for 109 (8%) residents and outside Europe for 28 residents (2%). Residents claimed a personal investment of a median of 200 euros (IQR 50-300), or 67% of the total cost of the last attended conference (Figure 1). They also described 6370 previous conferences, 59% self-funded, 22% publicly-funded (scientific societies, hospitals, health agencies) and 19% industry-funded. Money was considered as a barrier to attend medical conferences for 80% of the residents who answered the study. Conclusions: This national study is one of the first to focus on the funding of residents attending conferences. According to this survey, self-funding seems to be the norm rather than the exception, both for the last attended conference and the previous ones. These results could account for the low participation of French residents in more expensive European and international conferences. Our results could encourage scientific societies to participate in the funding of residents attending conferences to avoid both self-funding that undermines residents' salary and industry-related funding that creates early conflicts of interest. Figure 1: Repartition of the funding of residents for their last attended conference. The mean (± SD) total price was 418 euros (± 224)

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