Development and Utilization of a Medical Student Surgery Podcast During COVID-19

An invisible knife to add to your toolkit: a narrative review of how podcasts have audibly shaped, styled, and sharpened surgical education

Podcasts as a mobile learning platform to augment surgical expertise and dialogue have been embraced by many surgical educators and learners. Podcasts are digital audio files that can be streamed or downloaded from the internet to individual devices. Surgical podcast literature was appraised with a search using the keywords 'surgery' AND 'podcast' in the PubMed database which found 639 results with titles and abstracts screened to identify and review 28 relevant articles. This narrative review explores podcast origins, aims, structure and availability for diverse surgical audiences. It also appraises quality, strengths and limitations, highlighting optimal surgical podcast features. Finally, it proposes how to better implement podcasts into surgical training and clinical practice.

Podcast about child care as an educational health technology: a qualitative study

Introduction

Technological advances have transformed communication, making social media essential elements that promote easy access to information.

Objective

To understand the use of podcasts as an educational health technology for disseminating knowledge about child care.

Materials and Methods

Online, descriptive, and exploratory study, with a qualitative approach, developed between March and April 2023, using an electronic form with 41 participants, listeners of the podcasts from a technological initiation project. The data was processed in the Interface de R pour les Analyses Multidimensionnelles de Textes et de Questionnaires and analyzed according to Thematic Content Analysis.

Results

The use of the podcast was described as fundamental in the face of different doubts about child care. This educational technology proved enlightening, practical, accessible, and interesting, and the topics addressed were important for expanding the listeners' knowledge. Furthermore, the fact of having an audio format made consuming the content and daily tasks easier.

Discussion

Changes in the participants' behavior were observed through the use ofthis social media, encouraging safe practices and guidance that corroborate health education practices. It has reinforced the importance of social media as a means of disseminating information to improve care practices aimed at the pediatric population.

Conclusions

The podcast is an educational health technology that eases the dissemination of knowledge to the population about child care in a free, practical, and accessible way and can, therefore, be applied to health education, having an innovative character from the perspective of digital health.

How Are Alternative Clinical Placements Performed Compared to Traditional Clinical Placements During the COVID-19 Pandemic? Sought Through a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Clinical placement is the essential method of learning in health professions education, but it has been the most disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Institutions of higher education resorted to alternative learning such as telehealth, simulations, and blended-learning for clinical placement to ensure that educational activities continue without delay. However, this raises questions about student competency and necessitates making up for missed in-person hours. A thorough investigation of the effectiveness of alternative clinical placement learning is required. A systematic searching was conducted on ten electronic databases, and the quality of the included articles was assessed using the Medical Education Research Study Quality Instrument (MERSQI). A meta-analysis was conducted by pooling studies with examination mark outcomes. Twenty-four articles were included in the systematic review and nine were included in the meta-analysis. The average MERSQI score for included studies is 11.15. Outcomes on student performance favor alternative placement, whereas perceived-based outcomes have mixed results and are slightly prone to traditional clinical placement. Meta-analysis indicates that alternative learning is either more effective than traditional clinical placement or at least on par with it. There is a discrepancy between perceived outcome and performance assessment regarding the utility of alternative learning to conventional clinical placement. Nonetheless, objective measurement outcomes and the meta-analysis support alternative learning as a reliable learning strategy for clinical education. Alternative learning for clinical placement experience can be improved further by adding more synchronous sessions, and implementing various learning methods, learning activities based on strong instructional design, and at least a short real-setting attachment.

Embracing the (r)evolution of social media and digital scholarship in pediatric nephrology education

Free Open-Access Medical Education (FOAMed) has transformed medical education in the past decade by complementing and substituting for traditional medical education when needed. The attractiveness of FOAMed resources is due to their inexpensive nature, wide availability, and user ability to access on demand across a variety of devices, making it easy to create, share, and participate. The subject of nephrology is complex, fascinating, and challenging. Traditional didactic lectures can be passive and ineffective in uncovering these difficult concepts and may need frequent revisions. Active teaching methods like flipped classrooms have shown some benefits, and these benefits can only be multifold with current social media tools. Social media will inspire the involvement of students and allow them to create and share educational content in a "trendy way," encouraging the participation of their peers and thus building an educational environment more conducive to them while promoting revision and retainment. FOAMed also promotes asynchronous learning, spaced learning, microlearning, and multimodal presentation with a meaningful variation. This article discusses the evolution of digital education, social media platforms, tools for creating and developing FOAMed resources, and digital scholarship.

Framework for a radiography student podcast

Podcasts refer to episodes of audio content that are readily available on streaming applications on smartphones or computers. This paper reports on the development of the 'Breathe In Radiography Podcast' series for radiography students and provides suggestions for evaluation. Podcast development followed a structured framework, including identification of podcast topics and expert guests, content development, audio recording, episode upload to host site and distribution. Using a framework was useful to guide development and ensure consistency across podcast episodes. Evaluation through podcast usage data, surveys and focus groups provides a comprehensive strategy to explore radiography students' perception of the newly developed podcast series.

Educational Podcasts in Plastic Surgery: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Content, Metrics, and Target Audiences

BACKGROUND

Podcasts provide an efficient means for asynchronous learning. However, no study to date has thoroughly assessed the landscape of educational podcasts in plastic surgery. Thus, this study aims to evaluate and characterize current educational plastic surgery podcasts to ultimately inform future efforts.

METHODS

Three platforms were queried for educational plastic surgery podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Podcast descriptions and episodes were then independently reviewed to determine primary target audiences, performance metrics, and content categories.

RESULTS

There were a total of 163 plastic surgery podcasts. 145 of these 163 podcasts were targeted toward a nonmedical audience. The remaining 18 podcasts met inclusion criteria as educational plastic surgery podcasts. Of all educational podcast episodes, 8.8% targeted a medical student audience, 33.8% targeted trainees (residents/fellows), and 57.4% targeted practicing surgeons or emphasized recent research in the field. Episode content categories included breast (14.2%), cosmetic (11.8%), experimental (0.5%), hand/peripheral nerve (8.6%), pediatric/craniofacial (8.2%), reconstructive (15.6%), practice management (14.8%), residency (6.6%), and others (19.6%).

CONCLUSIONS

Despite the large number of plastic surgery podcasts available, few podcasts focus on educating a medical audience. Within this small subset, there is a paucity of content targeted towards medical students interested in plastic surgery. While there is a wide breadth of content available, there is significant room for growth and refinement in the podcast sector for plastic surgery education.

Strategies for Digital Clinical Teaching During the COVID Pandemic: A Scoping Review

Widespread "lockdowns" during the COVID pandemic in 2020-2021 restricted medical students' access to patients. We used a scoping review with exploratory thematic synthesis to examine how reports of digital clinical teaching during the first year of the COVID pandemic could inform digital clinical teaching in the post-pandemic world. We looked at strategies used and outcomes reported, lessons learned about how best to use digital methods for clinical teaching, and learning theories used. The eighty-three articles included in the final review fell into four groups. These were telehealth interventions; virtual case-based teaching; multi-modal virtual rotations; and a small group of "other" strategies. Telehealth reports indicated that COVID has probably accelerated the adoption of telehealth, and these skills will be required in future curricula. Engagement with virtual case-based teaching was problematic. Virtual rotations were particularly valued in specialties that relied on visual interpretation such as radiology and dermatology. For general clinical specialties, digital clinical teaching was not a satisfactory substitute for real clinical exposure because it lacked the complexity of usual clinical practice. Sixty-seven articles reported students' reactions only, and 16 articles reported a change in knowledge or skills. Demands on instructors were considerable. Few studies were theorized and none tested theory, which limited their transferability. While telehealth teaching may be a valuable addition to some curricula, digital clinical teaching is unlikely substantially to replace exposure to real patients outside of specialties that rely on visual interpretation. High demands on instructors suggest little potential for new, scalable digital clinical offerings after COVID.

Creation and cost-evaluation of a student-run podcast in ophthalmology

Podcasts are an increasingly popular medical education modality, especially in surgical fields. However, the cost of developing a high-quality medical education podcast presents a barrier to many content creators. The authors developed the podcast series 'The Lenspod,' designed to be a cost-efficient but high-quality education resource in ophthalmology. The REC financial framework has been previously used to estimate the financial costs of technology-based medical education. Using this framework, costs were competitive with other medical education podcasts. It is our hope that similar methodology may be used to create and disseminate future podcasts for medical education.

Reduced Vascular Practice and Increased Cardiovascular Mortality for COVID-19-Negative Patients

BACKGROUND

The aim of our study was to compare COVID-19- and not-COVID-19-related mortality rates in two Italian regions during the pandemic period when the same isolation rules and therapeutic approaches were introduced for all hospitals in Italy. Risk factors for not-COVID-19-related deaths during the pandemic were analyzed; we tried to assess a possible correlation between reducing hospital visits and "deferrable" vascular operations and the increased cardiovascular mortality not related to COVID-19 infection.

METHODS

We analyzed COVID-19- and not-COVID-19-related mortality rates in two Italian regions in the period January 2020-January 2021. We compared mortality rates during the pandemic period with those of the previous five years. We tried to determine the factors involved in increased mortality rates during the pandemic period.

RESULTS

Despite the same isolation rules for people and the same therapeutic approaches for hospitals, mortality rates did not increase in the region Lazio, where the pandemic was not severe. In the region Lombardy, the mortality rate was doubled in comparison with the previous years, and 50% of the increase was related to not-COVID-19 deaths.

CONCLUSIONS

The increase in mortality rates for not-COVID-19-related deaths in the region Lombardy was connected to the generalized turmoil in the acute phase of an overwhelming pandemic, including diffuse stress, inadequate communications, reluctance to ask for medical help unless symptoms were severe, and unexpected inadequate number of health workers, hospital beds, and intensive care unit beds. Reduced hospital visits may have had a fundamental role.