Are students getting FOAMed?

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.

A new adventure ahead…

about, FOAMed, online educational resources, students

As the new medical year begins for many students, FOAMedstudent.com would like to invite you on a journey of medical knowledge. We can hold your hand remotely, while you navigate the stormy waters ahead.

Our website offers a FREE, open access journey, featuring interactive, interesting and innovative learning methods, including YouTube videos, blogs, podcasts and much more.

The best part? It’s an exciting and effective method of study, to help you improve your understanding, clinical practice and (hopefully) performance!

The FOAM, or #FOAMed (Free Open Access Medicine) movement grew from humble origins and has largely developed from the passion of Emergency & Critical Care Physicians around Australia, and the world (including the mothership of all FOAM sites Life in the Fast Lane website).

Countless websites and online learning resources have since started identifying themselves as #FOAMed, and a newbie med student could easily get swallowed up in their own distraction! A student-focused website has been developed, to provide you tried and tested, effective resources already available out there… and keep you from frantically googling every new word you hear and ending up just staring at pictures of cute kittens… or the motorbike you want.

Come and participate in the #FOAMed movement, and eventually you may even find yourself contributing to the global body of knowledge.

FOAMedstudent.com will help you find resources for whatever clinical rotation or biomedical unit you find yourself in in 2015. Check out the resources we’ve collected, to help you focus as you navigate all the FOAMed out there. For example, if you start your anatomy labs and your brain starts hurting, try this page. If it’s the group learning style (PBLs) that stress you out, browse the case’s topic under clinical links. We try to make sure our links are student-friendly. That is, short, to-the-point, snappy morsels of education, for students always on the run.

Join the #FOAMed movement here, on Facebook, and on Twitter (or by searching with the hashtags #FOAMed and #FOAMedstudent).

Best of luck for your studies in 2015.

Ali (@intransition2)and Sam (@SOgnenis).

Ali Gould
Final Year
University of Melbourne

Sam Ognenis
Final Year
University of Western Australia

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.