Learning through podcasts

Medical teaching has begun to make use of the podcast, audio programmes distributed by use of the internet. Downloading podcasts is easy, and you have the choice of listening to them on your computer or putting them on your MP3 player and listening to them whenever you want—on the train, at the gym, or while sitting in the library.

You can download great podcasts at www.scrubbingup.com. These “scrubcasts” focus on one topic at a time—for example, on Cushing’s syndrome—and provide you with basic information about the condition. These podcasts are specifically designed for medical students and the dry humour will hold your attention. New podcasts are not added very often, and there are only a few available.

The website www.revise4finals.co.uk may be more familiar to final year students; it offers a wide variety of materials for revision. The podcasts are well made and offer more detail but are also longer. They can be rather bland, however, and occasionally you may find yourself drifting off.

The website www.podmedics.co.uk hosts similar podcasts to www.revise4finals.co.uk but is a collection of many medical podcasts available online. The site contains a lot of material and you are sure to find any topic that you wish to revise.

The podcasts at www.abdn.ac.uk/mrc/podcasts were created at the University of Aberdeen. These are of high quality and are very clinically based.

If you only want to revise a specific topic in more detail then podcasts exist to help. For example, www.peds.arizona.edu/residency/podcast.aspfocuses specifically on paediatrics. I found this website by searching for “paediatrics podcast” on Google. These podcasts are engaging because many of them are conversations on a specific topic.

If your clinical anatomy needs a bit of touching up before you go into theatre then www.instantanatomy.net/podcasts.html should prove useful. These podcasts mostly feature common or complex anatomy that is useful for medical professionals, such as the cranial nerves, abdominal wall, and the brachial plexus, to name but a few.

The BMJ has published mediolegal podcasts, mostly of interest to UK doctors; see bmj.com/audio.

       

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