PODCASTS for students

Introducing Jane McKenzie, and her top 3 favourite podcasts for medical students.

Podcasts can be one of the most useful ways to absorb information when you’re on the go or sick of staring at a book or screen. I’ve always found choosing a topic to focus on one of the hardest parts of studying the vastness of medicine, and podcasts are a great way to get an overview of a topic in small, user-friendly chunks of time. Here are some of my favourites from the past couple of years:

FOAMcast – Easily my favourite medical podcast, each episode presents different topics with an ICU management bent. The first half is usually dedicated to new literature and knowledge in the area, with the second dedicated to basic knowledge and clinical pearls. The presenters are likeable and present the information in a fun and enthusiastic way that draws you in.

Texas Tech Medcast – Produced with a focus on preparing students for the American USMLE Step Examinations, these podcasts present information via a clinical case or example exam question. Their Geriatric series is especially useful, drawing questions from the Step 2CK Prep Series.

Pedscases.com – Paediatric podcast created by medical students, for medical students, with overviews of all the useful key topics in paediatrics based on clinical scenarios. This kept me engaged in the case and helped to apply the theoretical knowledge to clinical situations.

For more student-friendly podcasts, check out those our other readers suggested on this page.

Jane McKenzie

Jane is a final year student at the University of Melbourne. She has long had an interest in how technology can be used to shape how people receive information, especially after starting medicine and trying to tackle the mountain of resources available online! She has experience in putting together websites and resources in a useful way as the Technical Officer for the University of Melbourne Medical Students’ Society in 2014 and 2015. Jane first became interested in the FOAM movement through interest in Emergency and Intensive Care medicine, and hopes to continue working in these areas.

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Are students getting FOAMed?

FOAM, FOAMed, poster, research, smacc

How aware are Australian medical students of FOAM? Are they using it? Of those who are using it, what are their favourite resources when they’re in a pinch for time? We’ve explored this and more, and presented our preliminary results in a poster at SMACC Chicago, which was a hoot. We thought we’d share these results with you too.

Check out our electronic poster here:

SMACC2015 Are students getting FOAMed poster

Authors: Alison Gould @intransition2 | Samual Ognenis @SOgnenis | Charlotte Alexander @_CharAlexander | Viet Tran @drvtran | Victori Brazil @SocraticEM

We’ll let you know when the full publication is out.

Pharm FOAM- where to get more of it?

FOAM, FOAMed, pharmacology, students

Introducing Emily Wiener, completing her Doctor of Pharmacy degree, here to fill us in on all things pharm.

According FOAMedstudent.com’s poll, pharm resources are in high demand amongst med students. As a pharmacy student, I’ve definitely had to dive into the depths of the internet to find the pharmacy FOAM out there. In order to make the navigation a little easier on the rest of you, I’ve compiled some of the great clinical resources I’ve come across.

For general drug information which is available without a subscription, globalrph.com is a site with numerous drug resources. They have charts and tables of drug classes (i.e. statin equivalency chart), drugs broken down by disease states, normal lab values, and renal dosing information. It isn’t the most frequently updated site and therefore isn’t the most reliable for guideline based medicine. Another wealth of information is empr.com, it includes drug monographs and drug charts. In order to access some of the features of the site you do need to create a free account. It’s a great site to use to stay up to date on new drug approvals, newly generic drugs, and drugs in the pipeline.

Meded101.com is a blog containing information about common (or commonly forgotten) drug-drug interactions, polypharmacy, and basic med info. The moderator of the site is also quite active on Twitter (@mededucation101) with frequent tweets about med interactions or things to keep in mind when selecting meds.

There are a number of blogs which regularly post pharmacy relevant evidence based medicine topics. Geared for ambulatory care pharmacists, iforumrx.org (@iforumrx) regularly has peer-reviewed posts mostly about chronic disease state management. Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (www.aliem.com, @ALiEMteam) has a variety of emergency medicine related topics including peer-reviewed relevant pharmacy/toxicology posts, tagged as “Tox & Medications”. empharmd.blogspot.com is a blog which provides a pharmacy point of view on all things emergency medicine. For cardiology EBM posts, HeartMeds has an extensive archive which is well tagged for easy to find posts sorted by drug. One of the contributors of HeartMeds has his own EBM blog called The Unit (www.reedrx.com/unit, @brentnreed) which is mostly heart-failure specific.

Finally, don’t forget perhaps the greatest pharm related resource, your clinical pharmacist. Ok maybe I’m a little biased but the dynamic interactions with your clinical pharmacist (or pharmacy student) are great learning experiences for all parties involved and have been shown to improve patient outcomes.

Please feel free to post your favorite pharm FOAM in the comments section.

Emily Wiener is finishing up her final month of her Pharm.D. degree at University of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. Following graduation, she will be pursuing a PGY1 residency at Sinai Hospital Baltimore. Her interests include emergency medicine, HIV, and pharmacy education. An avid #FOAMed supporter, she can be found @PharmDEMily.

Follow Emily @PharmDEMily

This site draws together FOAM relevant for medical students

about, collaborate, FOAM, FOAMed

What’s FOAM?

FOAM archives are bulging with the ‘sexy stuff’ of Emergency Medicine and Critical Care, and urology, curiously…

How can we find the stuff most relevant to medical students? It’s a jungle of open cricothyroidotomies and debates on thrombolysis out there.

How can we stay focused, and use FOAM to help us get through exams… and even become better doctors?

This site is created and enriched by medical students. It’s riddled with links to FOAMed resources we vote are best suited to us. Tell us if you find more.

This is really a collaborative project, so share to your mates. Watch this space for FOAMed resource reviews, interviews with student FOAM creators, blog posts by FOAMites around the world.