Purpose
Podcasts have emerged as a valuable educational tool, offering flexibility and accessibility that align with demanding schedules. The growth of podcasts in medical education over the past decade has been particularly significant, with the COVID-19 pandemic further accelerating their adoption. Podcasts provide learners with the opportunity to engage in "opportunistic learning," allowing consumption of educational content while performing other tasks, and have been found to be as effective as traditional self-directed learning methods.
Methods
Our Professional Development (PD) team modified educational content already in place for our learners by creating and implementing a year-long podcast series. Podcast content was determined by needs analysis, educational standards, and team consensus. Each 20-30 minute podcast focused on a teaching, leadership, well-being, or patient-safety topic. Podcast presenters consisted of local subject matter experts. Specific podcast content was developed by these presenters with help from the PD team. We distributed the podcasts quarterly via email and learners completed a brief electronic reflection.
Results
Not all data related to this initiative has been analyzed to date but will be available when this poster is presented. The opportunity to engage with relevant content flexibly resulted in timely content delivery via a digestible format that supports the busy schedule of learners. While engaging with a podcast is less cumbersome for learners, creating a podcast with high-quality, engaging content is time and labor-intensive. Extensive planning, script preparation, consultations with podcast participants, and editing were unanticipated outcomes of this initiative.
Conclusions
Embracing and leveraging emerging technologies to deliver curated content via a flexible modality, such as a podcast, offers opportunities for learning within time-constrained environments. This initiative created a foundational collection of readily available resources for learners to engage with. Sharing these experiences provides a roadmap and lessons learned for resource-limited education programs wanting to create similar podcast offerings.