Continuing Medical Education in an On-Demand World: Is Podcasting the Netflix of Medical Education?

Podcasting: A Brief History of a New Educational Medium

Podcasting, like many new technologies, provides the opportunity to make learning more convenient and efficient. Since gaining popularity as a medium in the early 2000s, there is a growing number of podcasts in the medical field that target the lay public, patients, and health care professionals.¹ In 2018, the Edison Report stated that 44% of Americans had listened to a podcast in their lifetime, and 26% listened in the past month.² These percentages have consistently risen since 2008.² Regular podcast listeners tend to have an advanced degree, full-time employment, and a higher annual household income than the general US population.² The Edison Report also states that podcasting takes advantage of commute time, and as per the US Census Bureau, the average American commute is 26 minutes each way.² Given this reported average listener profile, physicians seem ideal targets for podcast-based education.

Podcasts are currently used in a variety of ways for medical education. The earliest adopters of medical education podcasting were emergency physicians and intensivists.³ Residents have been quick to adopt podcasts as part of their medical education toolbox because they tend to be younger and more likely to use technology. Mallin et al⁴ showed that …