Free open access medical education – or FOAM – is any medical educational content that’s shared freely on open access platforms, meaning the public can consume it without having to be a member of an organization or pay a subscription fee. The reason it’s significant is that it brings evolving science & literature – and discussions around the art & science of medicine – into the hands of providers without the traditional paywalls that trade associations or peer-reviewed journals put up between you & their content in order to fund their work. FOAM is all about the accessibility of information and given the rapid pace at which medical information evolves and podcasts, blogs & online journals can be updated, FOAM helps shape conversations around what’s happening right now in healthcare.
It’s been said if you want to know the state of the literature 5-7 years ago, read the latest edition of any textbook. If you want to know what was going on 2-3 years ago, read the print journal that just came to your mailbox. And if you want to know what’s happening and changing right now, get on social media.
In this episode, I discuss the history of FOAM and talk through the influence of social media in anesthesia education. We take a look at the incentives that shape the behavior of content producers in the social media world and look at ways of harnessing FOAM and social media platforms to leverage these tools for the greatest impact.
Resources:
Andrejco, K. (2017). Social Media in Nurse Anesthesia: A Model of a Reproducible Educational Podcast. AANA journal, 85(1). Retrieved from https://www.aana.com/docs/default-source/aana-journal-web-documents-1/social-media-0217-pp10-16.pdf?sfvrsn=89cd48b1_6
Chan, T. M., Stehman, C., Gottlieb, M., & Thoma, B. (2020). A short history of free open access medical education. the past, present, and future. ATS scholar, 1(2), 87-100. https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.34197/ats-scholar.2020-0014PS
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