The FOAMed Revolution Continues…

Authors: Brit Long, MD (@long_brit, EM Attending Physician) and Alex Koyfman, MD (@EMHighAK, EM Attending Physician, UT Southwestern Medical Center / Parkland Memorial Hospital) 

Medical education has drastically changed since its humble beginnings, where one experienced physician or professor would lecture to an audience of students. Texts provided the other means of learning. This form of education then moved to a focus on small group learning, but today’s education world has advanced even further with the advent of social media.

FOAMed, or Free Open Access Medical Education, is a collection of resources and community based on the premise of providing quality medical education anywhere, anytime. Blogs, podcasts, tweets, online videos, and much more compose FOAMed. This forms the backbone of emDocs.net in order to elevate the bedside care we provide.

Textbooks remain a major component of core knowledge for those learning medicine. A key aspect of FOAMed is reducing knowledge translation, taking new literature and placing it in the hands of those at the bedside for immediate clinical practice in a thoughtful manner.  Access Emergency Medicine and Tintinalli’s Emergency Medicine contain a new feature called “Best of the Blogs” that links textbook chapters with new, high quality FOAMed resources. Not only do readers obtain the core content of emergency medicine, but now they have access to the cutting edge literature with “Best of the Blogs.”

We hope you check out http://accessemergencymedicine.mhmedical.com/ss/best_of_the_blogs.aspx, and feel free to comment below.