Social Media and Physician Learning

Free Open Access Meducation (FOAM): the rise of emergency medicine and critical care blogs and podcasts (2002–2013)

“…Their use in medical education has been documented in the literature,1 2 and they could play a prominent role in facilitating the type of ‘flipped classroom’ education recently described in Academic Medicine 3 4. Emergency medicine and critical care (EMCC) have led the way in the explosive growth of these resources 2.…”

Development, improvement and funding of the emergency medicine cases open-access podcast

“…The term ‘Free Open-Access Medical EDucation' (FOAMed), coined in 2012, is a subset of social media relating to the “creation and exchange of user-generated [medical] content via virtual networks and communities” 4 . It is growing rapidly, out of a desire by health care professionals for free medical education and as a means to stay current with the wide scope of EM literature 5 , 6 . This article describes the creation of the Emergency Medicine Cases (EMC) podcast, as well as the innovative transformation that occurred as a result of its conversion to a free open-access resource and its partnership with an academic institution.…”

Technology in rural continuing medical education

“…The recent rapid surge of information technology development has been a great boon to improving access for rural and remote physicians. [10][11][12][13] The growing focus on mobile and wireless capability seems to address the needs of physicians on the go or in distant locations. 13 These devices have created new roads for people to connect, and rural physicians should be power users in this regard.…”

“…[10][11][12][13] The growing focus on mobile and wireless capability seems to address the needs of physicians on the go or in distant locations. 13 These devices have created new roads for people to connect, and rural physicians should be power users in this regard. 13 As the capabilities to transfer and share information continue to evolve, there is incredible potential to use the information highway to shrink the geographic distance that separates rural and remote physicians from resources and colleagues.…”

“…Physicians are also rapidly utilizing social media to engage each other globally. 13 Doctors who find that they cannot attend a specific conference of interest can still join the conversation by searching up that conference's hashtag (#) online. 14,15 Websites like www.symplur.com work to inform health care professionals of various conferences' and moderated online discussions' Twitter hashtags.…”