Without evidence of benefit, an intervention should not be presumed to be beneficial or safe.

- Rogue Medic

What can I give you as a present for 2012? FOAM

 

 

This is a time when many of us are giving gifts to others.

This is not my gift, it comes from Life in the Fast Lane. I am only letting you know about it.
 

This is FREE.
 

F – Free
O – Open
A – Access
M – Meducation

Meducation is Medical Education. There was Guinness involved. The quantity of Guinness was not specified.
 

Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, *awful* idea![1]

 

Is this awful?

No, but I am not fond of the term meducation. 😉
 

 

What is the most important part of medical education?

Medical education is expensive!

FOAM is –

Free.

No cost to us.

Open Access.

We do not have to subscribe to anything.

Medical education.

Better understanding of medicine.
 

We have access to free, up to date, medical education anywhere we have internet access, or we can download it for later use.
 

If you want to know how we practiced medicine 5 years ago, read a textbook.
If you want to know how we practiced medicine 2 years ago, read a journal.
If you want to know how we practice medicine now, go to a (good) conference.
If you want to know how we will practice medicine in the future, listen in the hallways and use FOAM.
— from International EM Education Efforts & E-Learning by Joe Lex 2012[2]

 

Dr. Joe Lex of Temple University Hospital has had the Free Emergency Medicine Talks web site for years. There are over 2,000 free mp3 downloads of presentations from many of the top medical conferences. These are usually without the slides, but some do include the slides.

I disagree with What Dr. Cadogan says about anonymity. My identity is no secret. If you don’y know who I am, you either don’t care or you don’t know how to use a search engine.

Would knowledge of my identity change anything about what I write?

No.

Would I need to pretend that bad ideas deserve more respect?

Not even a little bit. Bad ideas do not deserve respect.

We need to be able to determine whether information is valid without having to rely on the authority of the name attached to the information. If we need names, then we do not know enough for people to put their lives in our hands.[3]

Some people may need to maintain anonymity because of the archaic rules of their employers, so anonymity can be important, but anonymity is not bad.
 

Check out FOAM.

Check out GMEP.org

Check out Free Emergency Medicine Talks

We can learn from people we may never have heard of, speaking/writing in places we would never be able to travel to.

We can give ourselves the vital gifts of education and understanding.

Footnotes:

[1] Grinch (1966) quotes
IMDb.com
Quote page

[2] International EM Education Efforts & E-Learning
Dr. Joe Lex
Free Emergency Medicine Talks
Web page with link to mp3 download

[3] Blogging and Anonymity
Rogue Medic
Sun, 07 Oct 2012
Article

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