A. Merchant1, S. Shah1, A. Khursheed2, M. Ali2, S. Najam2, R. Farooq2, S. Bakhshi1,2, N. Afzal1,2, K. Rahim1, N. Shaikh1, A. H. Haider1,2,3 3Aga Khan University Medical College, Department Of Community Health Sciences, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan 1Aga Khan University Medical College, Dean’s Office, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan 2Aga Khan University Medical College, Department Of Surgery, Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan
Introduction:
There has been an emerging trend of podcast use in medical education over the last decade. This increase has been exponential since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the use of e-resources becoming substantial. However, the utilization of standardized methods to assess podcast quality has only recently grabbed the attention of clinical educators. With the increasing number of podcasts and medical students' interest in trauma surgery, it is vital to validate their content. Therefore, we aimed to identify the total number of podcast episodes published on trauma surgery to date and determine their quality.
Methods:
The three most common podcast platforms (Google, Apple, and Spotify) were used to identify podcast episodes using the key term “trauma surgery” from January 2000 to May 2023. An initial screening was performed to exclude podcasts not fulfilling the inclusion criteria based on their title (specific specialty/psychological trauma). Two surgical residents then thoroughly listened to each shortlisted podcast to extract data including the time duration, setting, host and guest credentials, and fulfillment of quality indicators. A previously established checklist developed from a modified Delphi consensus of 44 international health professions educators was used to assess the podcasts in three major domains: credibility, content, and design. A surgical faculty resolved any conflict within the extracted data after listening to the podcast. A score of at least 80% in credibility, 75% in content and 100% in design was required to classify a podcast episode as having good quality.
Results:
A total of 206 podcasts were identified from the initial search. Based on the inclusion criteria, 55 podcasts were included for analysis, with approximately equal representation from Apple and Google platforms (49.1% and 50.9%, respectively). All podcasts were published after 2014, with the majority of them hosted by males (84.7%), based in the United States (90.9%), and focusing on clinical knowledge (80.0%). Both the podcast hosts and guests predominantly had a Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree, with 71.9% of guests being practicing trauma surgeons. While all podcasts had excellent quality content and design (100.0%), 20.0% podcasts were rated poorly on the credibility domain. The credibility further reduced for 60.0% podcasts because of non-disclosure of conflicts of interest.
Conclusion:
Podcasts are now becoming a major source of information for surgical residents and medical students. Such a source of knowledge needs to be credible and accurate. Our findings can help content producers in medical education improve the quality of their podcasts and support learners and educators to become critical consumers of information.
