Quality indicators for blogs and podcasts used in medical education: modified Delphi consensus recommendations by an international cohort of health professions educators.
BACKGROUND
Quality assurance concerns about social media platforms used for education have arisen within the medical education community. As more trainees and clinicians use resources such as blogs and podcasts for learning, we aimed to identify quality indicators for these resources. A previous study identified 151 potentially relevant quality indicators for these social media resources.


OBJECTIVE
To identify quality markers for blogs and podcasts using an international cohort of health professions educators.


METHODS
A self-selected group of 44 health professions educators at the 2014 International Conference on Residency Education participated in a Social Media Summit during which a modified Delphi consensus study was conducted to determine which of the 151 quality indicators met the a priori ≥90% inclusion threshold.


RESULTS
Thirteen quality indicators classified into the domains of credibility (n=8), content (n=4) and design (n=1) met the inclusion threshold.


CONCLUSIONS
The quality indicators that were identified may serve as a foundation for further research on quality indicators of social media-based medical education resources and prompt discussion of their legitimacy as a form of educational scholarship.
Department of Emergency Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA MedEdLIFE Research Collaborative, San Francisco, California, USA.
Michelle
M
Lin
MedEdLIFE Research Collaborative, San Francisco, California, USA Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Brent
B
Thoma
Section of Emergency Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
N Seth
NS
Trueger
HealthPartners Institute for Education & Research, Bloomington, Minnesota, USA Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Felix
F
Ankel
Division of Emergency Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada Clinician Educator, Royal College of Physicians & Surgeons of Canada.
Jonathan
J
Sherbino
MedEdLIFE Research Collaborative, San Francisco, California, USA Division of Emergency Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Teresa
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6104-462X
T
Chan
D057218:Blogging; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D032921:Consensus; D003697:Delphi Technique; D004501:Education, Medical / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends*; D005178:Faculty; D006281:Health Occupations / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D019984:Quality Indicators, Health Care / Q000592:standards*; D061108:Social Media; D057211:Webcasts as Topic
MEDICAL EDUCATION & TRAINING