Medical Podcasts – A New Tool for Content Delivery in Medical Education

The use of medical podcasts has increased rapidly, with at least five schools advertising that they use medical podcasts for teaching content. Yes, podcasts have become a natural teaching tool, especially for Millennial Generation students who are already familiar with gadgets such as MP3 players, smartphones, and more. It’s also becoming very common in the educational setting to use medical podcasts to teach students about a new concept or re-broadcast their previous lecture.

Today, medical societies are using the best medical podcasts to teach specialty subjects and to demonstrate and teach surgical procedures. Many medical schools have started producing podcast episodes as independent supplemental materials that allow students to access information on their own timetable.

Medical students are generally pleased with this form of information delivery is likely due to two reasons.

• Provides good control over the time and location to review the materials.
• This form of information delivery resonates clearly for a generation of learners who are comfortable with a digital, controllable delivery, and more.

Medicine podcasts cannot be used as a replacement of traditional lecture but to provide students with access to additional medical information and advancements in their field of interest. According to a recent study on podcast usage in undergraduate medical education, podcasts of 30 minutes or less were preferred in the majority of participants who had a preference in duration. The top three activities participants were engaged in while listening to the podcasts were driving (46%), completing chores (26%), and exercising (23%). A large number of participants who did not complete the study in its entirety cited a lack of time and podcast length to be the top two barriers to completion.

Benefits of Medical Podcasts for Medical Students

Save Time

Time is so precious for a medical student and listening to a medically-focused podcast while driving, doing chores, or more can save time abundantly. It helps medical students to strengthen their knowledge and provides sufficient information for them to prepare for competitive exams and more.

Listen to Stories of Patients

Listening to medical podcasts helps medical students build empathy and encourages them to pay heed to the stories of the patients. It moulds them into a well-rounded future physician and creates empathetic doctors.

Makes Learning Engaging

Medical podcasts are a boon to medical students who are tired of boring lectures. Recently, there are podcasts that conveys information from peer-reviewed articles from scientific journals and report the information using jokes, sound gags, and understandable language. You can also gain information on various topics, including obesity, chiropractors, abortion, birth control, vitamins, and vaccines, and more.

The author of this article is a leading healthcare practitioner looking for innovative ways to gain information and deliver content. In this article, he explains how medical podcasts are becoming a powerful tool to educate medical students. Visit https://critcareedu.com.au/ for more information.

Critical Care Education is a website created to share recent literature on practical topics in critical care. The philosophy behind this is “Learn to Share & Share to Learn”.