Developing a Physiatry Podcast Series: A Call for Participants
PM&R residents are always looking for quick and easy ways to enhance their medical knowledge. One exciting new medium is medical podcasts. The use of podcasts in other specialties to enhance medical education has greatly expanded over the past several years. These podcasts can help physicians stay up to date on current literature and knowledge in their field. Unfortunately, a comprehensive podcast regarding PM&R relevant literature is currently unavailable and could be another valuable resource and learning tool for those in the field of PM&R.
Our goal is to develop an educational resource that can be utilized on a weekly basis to keep PM&R residents across the country up to date on current research in our field, have topic reviews and provide a forum for discussion about changes in healthcare impacting physiatry.
A pre-podcast survey was sent to PM&R residents across the country to learn about their comfort with current PM&R literature and the type of resources currently being used to stay up to date. Our results showed that over 50% of responding residents were less than “somewhat” comfortable with current research and over 50% were reviewing less than 2 articles per month.
Most residents rely on academic journals and residency curriculum as their gateway to review literature. The majority of residents also responded that their literature review rarely led to a change in their medical decision-making. While 74% or responding residents are not currently using podcasts, greater than 50% are likely or very likely to use a podcast for medical learning if a relevant podcast were to become available.
Our discussions with residents and the results of this survey clearly demonstrate the need for an alternative resource to engage residents in new research. The survey also told us that there is interest in a podcast being that resource. With this information in mind, we created the PM&R Blast Podcast.
The goal is to have a weekly podcast that is engaging and informative across the PM&R spectrum from sports to spine. The knowledge base of PM&R continues to expand and like stretching, every little bit you practice counts. Hopefully our podcast can make driving to work, doing the dishes or running on the treadmill a little more educational
This is a podcast by residents and for residents. We are currently looking for more residents to become involved; if you are interested in podcasting or production, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from you.
You can access our current podcasts at pmrblast.podbean.com or on iTunes by searching “PM&R Blast.” You can contact us at PMRBlast@gmail.com.
