Looking for bite-sized, engaging CPD? Learn with podcasts!

Did you know that you can claim MOC Program credits for listening to medical podcasts? I’m an Emergency Medicine (EM) physician and my discipline has really embraced the era of online learning in medical education. In recent years the FOAM (Free Open Access Medical Education) movement has generated an explosion of high-quality podcasts that I now follow for my continuing professional development (CPD):

• EMCrit
• Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM)
• The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine
• Life in the Fast Lane
• Emergency Medicine Cases

Podcasts — small packages, big benefits

• Podcasts present information in an auditory way that is engaging, bite-sized and digestible.
• Podcasts are one of the most up-to-date information media, often prioritizing a discipline’s latest innovations and technologies.
• Podcasts are portable — you can access them on-the-go from everywhere. The blogs that accompany many medical podcasts provide written summaries that interpret the evidence for you and provide context to enhance your learning.
• The blog portion often contains references that I use as secondary sources to corroborate the information. They help me ensure I’m basing my understanding on evidence rather than an outlying opinion.
• Lastly, the accompanying blog encourages comments, providing a forum for peer review, ongoing discussion and learning in-situ.

Two ways to use podcasts in your MOC

1. Claim podcasts as a scanning activity under Section 2 for 0.5 credits per podcast.
2. Take your podcast activity one step further and use it to jump-start a Personal Learning Project (PLP) for two credits per hour. I like to review the evidence and reference lists in the written summaries and use these resources as stimuli for additional learning through a PLP.

Here are some suggested podcasts to get you started

• CMAJ podcasts: Interviews with authors and experts brought to you from the Canadian Medical Association
• UpToDate Talk: Clinical podcasts
• Surgery 101: A surgery podcast created by surgeons at the University of Alberta
• Behind the Knife: A surgery podcast hosted by American surgeons