The Role of Medical Education Podcasts in Pediatrics Free

Podcasting as a source of medical education is 18 years old and has proven to be a convenient, popular, mainstream tool for providers of all training levels. We can no longer write and think about it as a novel pedagogy in medical education but instead as a widely used source of medical information today. Pediatric educators should work to use this tool in a meaningful way, and institutions should actively work to support podcast development.

According to Edison Research, 89 million Americans listen to podcasts on a weekly basis.¹  Worldwide, nearly 500 million people listen to podcasts.²  This vast audience makes podcasting an efficient platform for reaching the public and colleagues with research findings, educational content, and advocacy work. Podcasts were born in 2004 as a daily radio-like program called The Daily Source Code. In 2005, Apple incorporated support for these programs in iTunes and they became known as “podcasts” because they represented a way of broadcasting audio to an iPod. There is a long history of medical education adopting asynchronous audio formats.³  Pediatrics, specifically, was an early adopter of podcasts. The first pediatric podcast was for patients and families in 2006, called PediaCast. This was followed by PedsCases in 2008 developing educational podcasts for medical trainees. No one has quantified the number of pediatric podcasts made by pediatricians currently in circulation.

Outside of pediatrics, the medical field has begun capitalizing on this innovative platform. Podcasts have a reach across the spectrum of health practitioners, including medical students, residents, attending physicians, subspecialists, advanced practice practitioners, nurses, and pharmacists.^4,5  Educational podcasts have a reach exceeding those of traditional medical education techniques.^5,6 Table 1 reveals the wide reach of some pediatric educational podcasts with episodes reaching >20 000 listens. Consider this in contrast to the hundreds of attendees at local grand rounds or 10 000 to 15 000 total attendees at the largest national pediatric conferences. In emergency medicine, a survey of residents revealed podcasts had an almost ubiquitous reach, with monthly use by 89% of residents.⁴  Residents in other specialties, such as internal medicine and anesthesia, have lower but still substantial utilization, ∼60%.^5,6  The prevalence of medical education podcast usage in pediatric residents is currently unknown.

Podcasts are used as a resource for medical education both formally in curricula and informally by learners. A growing body of literature supports podcasts as well-received by listeners and an evidence-based pedagogy aligning with adult learning theory.⁷  The authors of a recent scoping review in Academic Medicine reported podcasts across disciplines were highly regarded by listeners, demonstrated noninferiority compared with traditional teaching methods, and were associated with self-reported practice change among residents and practicing physicians.⁷  Moreover, podcasts offer an effective form of asynchronous passive learning; one study revealed podcasts consumed while driving were just as effective for short- and long-term retention as those heard while seated without distraction.⁸  Educational podcast producers include not only academic educators (eg, PHM from Pittsburgh, Primary Care Perspectives from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, The Cribsiders, PedsRAP) but influential medical journals and national organizations (eg, American Academy of Pediatrics: Pediatrics on Call, JAMA Pediatrics, Canadian Pediatric Society: PedsCases). Despite being embraced by many academic educators and societies and a growing body of evidence to support their effectiveness, podcasts often remain on the fringes of formal medical education.

To transition podcasts into a more prominent role, medical podcasts need support to face the challenges unique to digital education in the form of time and funding. Beyond the time spent creating content for a lecture, podcast creation involves investment in planning, scripting, producing, and sound editing an episode. It can be challenging to find pediatricians with content expertise, as well as skills in sound engineering, marketing, and public relations. Indeed, the time invested may come from an interprofessional team. Despite some logistical challenges, this offers opportunities to dismantle institutional silos. Additionally, trainees are more likely to have experience with this medium and can offer valuable contributions to podcast production, potentially even choosing academic programs on the basis of their use of digital forms of learning and scholarship.

Knowing podcasts are a core part of academic learning for all levels of training, we need to support this platform and stop dismissing it as an adjunct, unexplored learning tool. Podcasts have a reach that allows listener engagement through a sense of connectedness with a larger professional community. Funding is a critical way to bolster podcast legitimacy and creation. It often comes from institutional resources or must otherwise come through advertisers. Institutional funds, typically provided by public relations or continuing medical education sources, require data to justify their use. Podcast analytics offer robust data on listenership, but methods to ensure target audience engagement at the institutional level are limited and require more study.⁹  If creators do not receive adequate institutional support, they may seek advertisers to fund their efforts, calling into concern potential conflicts of interest. Institutions should consider supporting and rewarding faculty participation in the creation and review process. To foster the creation of evidence-based medical education podcasts, institutions should financially support the time around content creation, support costs associated with hosting, hardware, and editing, and promote podcasts developed inside institutions.

Podcasting as a pursuit can be adapted into courses or electives, offering educational credit for those who learn the craft. Traditional academic models for career advancement are based on research grants or papers. Consensus guidelines have been developed to recognize digital scholarship for academic promotion;¹⁰  however, they have yet to be widely adopted. By applying scholarship criteria, providing evidence of impact, and formalizing peer review, institutions can recognize digital scholarship, such as podcasting as part of academic achievement.¹⁰ 

A criticism of podcasts is that they can be created by anyone with few checks and balances for quality and accuracy. However, many podcasts have established peer review processes before distribution, such as in PedsCases, Cribsiders, PHM from Pittsburgh, PedsRAP, and Pediacast CME. Podcasts sponsored by academic institutions or national academies may be less likely to have misinformation or nonevidence-based practices. In addition, evidence-based quality metrics, such as the rMETRIQ tool, can be used for critical appraisal.¹¹  Organizations, such as Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Approved Instructional Resources, provide curated online content reviewed for quality and accuracy, and a similar approach could be adopted for pediatric educators.¹² 

Although some view podcasting as an alternative medium, the evidence suggests podcasts are a widely used and effective educational tool for physicians. Now that podcasts are turning 18, employing them as a legitimate educational resource in academia is a must. Not only should academic institutions financially support them but they should also promote podcasts to educate pediatric trainees. There are many ways to incorporate podcasts into learning; podcasts can be integrated into formal medical curricula as self-directed learning resources or as part of a flipped classroom model, sending learners into the lecture hall primed for the material. This practice can lead to increased engagement in the subject matter and the potential for increased retention of information. The infrastructure exists, and has for quite some time, to make this format into a more formally accepted educational resource. Experience and continuing medical education data support podcasting as an evidence-based pedagogy.