R. Anteby1,2, I. Amiel2, M. Cordoba2, D. Rosin2, R. Phitayakorn1 1Massachusetts General Hospital,Department Of Surgery,Boston, MA, USA 2The Chaim Sheba Medical Center,Department Of Surgery,Ramat Gan, RAMAT GAN, Israel
Introduction: Podcasts are an increasingly common method to provide medical education. The 2019 coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic dramatically reduced clinical exposure and learning opportunities for medical students. We sought to determine if a local podcast series could be created at a reasonable cost and then study its utilization for our regional medical students.
Methods: We created a podcast series based on the Medical Student Core Curriculum of the American College of Surgeons / Association for Surgical Education. Episodes were available for free download or streaming on a designated website, as well as popular podcast platforms (Spotify, Apple Podcasts). Podcast analytics were used to measure public listeners and impact.
Results: Total development time was 81 hours at an estimated cost of $6340 USD. A total of 9 episodes were released between March 21, 2020 and June 30, 2020. An average of 9±3.3 hours (range 6-16) was required to generate each episode, including 3.3±1.3 hours (2-6) for content review and 5.8±2 hours (4-10) for audio production (recording and editing). An average episode ran for 33.67±4.5 minutes (28-42). Podcasts recorded a total of 2936 downloads, with an average of 164 and 258 downloads per episode in the first 7 and 30 days, respectively. The average daily downloads before the return of medical students to clinical rotations (March 21 – May 01 2020) was 48±58.3 (7-283;) compared to 16±7.4 after their return (1-38; p < 0.01). Listeners came from 34 countries, the three most common: Israel (86.5%), United States (2.87%), Hungary (1.82%). Estimated costs to produce a video based education series on the same topics would have been significantly more.
Conclusion: Podcasts can serve as a cost-effective and quickly produced instructional method to supplement online learning. Further research is required to determine the efficacy of podcasts versus video-based education modules on acquisition and long-term retention of medical knowledge.