February 13, 2019

FOAM Impact Study

Written by Salim Rezaie
REBEL EM
Medical Category: Renal and Genitourinary

Online educational resources, social media, and asynchronous education increasingly dominate innovation and continuing medical education for practicing emergency physicians. The “Free Open-Access Medical Education” (FOAM) movement has utilized the power of global connectivity to drive narrowing of the knowledge translation window, however critics have urged caution and warned of error, as many of these resources lack peer review or quality control.¹REBEL EM is an online educational resource widely used throughout the FOAM community, garnering an average of 3,000 – 30,000 views/engagements per educational post, and satisfying all quality indicators that have been previously identified as markers of reliability and usability for digital scholarship.²To this end, we at REBEL EM are conducting a survey looking at rates of certain medication usage in the treatment of renal colic.

FOAM Impact Study:

Purpose: To better understand emergency provider management of pain secondary to renal colic.

Procedure/Tasks: Complete an online survey composed of a series of questions related to the management of renal colic. You will also answer some questions about your background.

Duration: If you could click on the survey link below and answer a few questions, we would really appreciate it. The study will take approximately 2 – 3 minutes of your time.

Survey Link

References:

Thoma B, Chan T, Desouza N, Lin M. Implementing peer review at an emergency medicine blog: bridging the gap between educators and clinical experts. Can J Emerg Med. 2015. PMID: 25927262
Lin M, Thoma B, Trueger NS, Ankel F, Sherbino J, Chan T. Quality indicators for blogs and podcasts used in medical education: modified Delphi consensus recommendations by an international cohort of health professions educators. Postgrad Med J. 2015. PMID: 26275428