How to Create and Evaluate a Resident-Led Audio Program: Six Clinical Podcasts for Medicine House Staff

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.

Podcast-Based Medical Education and Content Alignment with National Education Bodies

Introduction

Despite the rapid expansion of medical education podcasts in the past decade, there are few efforts to characterize the landscape of available content for specific medical specialties. We trialed a method of rigorous characterization for the field of neurology.

Materials and Methods

Using a censoring date of July 25, 2022, we queried the top three podcast platforms for neurology education podcasts: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. We characterized podcasts based on total number of episodes, episode release frequency, target audience, and affiliation type. We characterized individual episodes by length and primary content area as defined by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN). We compared content availability with content recommendations from these education bodies.

Results

We identified 30 podcasts sharing 1772 episodes and totaling 46,287 min. The ACGME subspecialties most frequently covered were vascular neurology (5082 total min, 11%), neuroimmunology (4,406, 10%), and neuromuscular diseases (3,771, 8%). Subjects that were underrepresented included palliative neurology (89 min, 0.2%), neuropathology (95 min, 0.2%), and bioethics (171 min, 0.4%). The coverage of ABPN examination topics varied substantially from the content distribution for the examination.

Discussion

The current landscape of neurology education podcasts features heterogeneous coverage of topics and varies considerably from recommended distribution of content by national education bodies. As podcasts have tremendous potential in supplementing neurology education, characterizing available content may help various stakeholders in the neurology education pipeline optimize the use of this e-learning modality.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40670-023-01971-0.

Guidelines: The Do's, Don'ts and Don't Knows of Creating Open Educational Resources

Background

In medical education, there is a growing global demand for Open Educational Resources (OERs). However, OER creators are challenged by a lack of uniform standards. In this guideline, the authors curated the literature on how to produce OERs for medical education with practical guidance on the Do's, Don'ts and Don't Knows for OER creation in order to improve the impact and quality of OERs in medical education.

Methods

We conducted a rapid literature review by searching OVID MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central database using keywords "open educational resources" and "OER". The search was supplemented by hand searching the identified articles' references. We organized included articles by theme and extracted relevant content. Lastly, we developed recommendations via an iterative process of peer review and discussion: evidence-based best practices were designated Do's and Don'ts while gaps were designated Don't Knows. We used a consensus process to quantify evidentiary strength.

Results

The authors performed full text analysis of 81 eligible studies. A total of 15 Do's, Don't, and Don't Knows guidelines were compiled and presented alongside relevant evidence about OERs.

Discussion

OERs can add value for medical educators and their learners, both as tools for expanding teaching opportunities and for promoting medical education scholarship. This summary should guide OER creators in producing high-quality resources and pursuing future research where best practices are lacking.