M. Sharpe1, A. Badrinathan3, S. Kishawi3, V. Ho1,2 1Case Western Reserve University School Of Medicine, Cleveland, OH, USA 2MetroHealth Medical Center, Cleveland, OH, USA 3University Hospitals, Cleveland, OH, USA
Introduction:
Physicians, medical students, and other healthcare professionals are charged with staying current throughout all of their training. Two of the fastest growing avenues of gathering digital medical education are podcasts and YouTube videos. Particularly during the COVID-19 global pandemic, podcast listeners in the US grew by 40% over the past three years. To our knowledge, no studies have examined the scope of podcasts and videos in regards to trauma recovery and trauma surgery. Our goal was to characterize and evaluate the growing number of trauma-related podcasts and YouTube channels.
Methods:
We conducted a search across three podcasting platforms (Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify) and one video sharing site (YouTube) for podcasts published up to July 31, 2022. Platforms were searched for the terms “Trauma” and “Trauma Surgery”. We included any podcast or video channel in English that focused on trauma surgery or trauma survivorship and recovery. We collected numerous variables from each podcast and channel that met criteria, including the title, show description, host characteristics, number of total episodes, geographic audience and dates of the first and most recent episodes. Descriptive analyses were used to determine the overall characteristics of podcasts and YouTube channels, reported as median with interquartile range (IQR).
Results:
We identified 31 podcasts and 10 YouTube (YT) channels dedicated to trauma recovery and/or trauma surgery. The longest running podcast was the TraumaCast (2011 to present) and the oldest YT channel, TraumaPro, ran from 2009 to present. The podcast with the most episodes was Trauma Therapist, while the YT channel with the most episodes was the Arizona Trauma Association (710 episodes vs 247 videos). The median number of episodes for each podcast was 64 (14-98) and 32 (16-44) for YT videos. Podcasts were evenly distributed towards educating public audiences on trauma and trauma-related mental health issues (14/30, 46.6%) and medical professionals (14/30, 46.6%).
Conclusions:
Our study shows that a majority of popular trauma-focused podcasts are targeting the general population and their mental health in regards to trauma recovery. This shows that hosts and content creators behind these digital platforms are aiming to help educate the public on the recovery process. Understanding how these resources can best be utilized could help surgeons to better educate their potential patients and colleagues.