Podcasting For Medical Professionals: Taking A Medical Podcast From Idea To Recording And Reality

Podcasting as a source of medical education is over eighteen years old and has proven to be a convenient, popular and mainstream tool for providers of all training levels. Medical educators are now thinking of podcasting as a widely-used source of education for trainees today. There is no manual or text that exists today to provide step-by-step instruction on how to take a medical podcast from an idea to a finished audio product. This book is that practical guide to podcast creation for health care professionals in any field of medicine.

This text begins by reviewing medical podcasting and its impact on medicine, giving readers a history of the medium. Next, it outlines how to hone your idea for a podcast from something you envision, to something that will be a meaningful contribution to medical education. It then lets you know best practices for content creation and how to ensure your content is high-quality and evidenced-based. This leads to a review of the technical tools needed for recording, editing, hosting, and analytics. It explores common challenges in podcasting and their solutions, as well as novel approaches to podcasting including artificial intelligence. It ends with a description of how to incorporate medical podcasting into a teaching program or academic career.

Comprised of fifteen chapters, Podcasting for Medical Professionals provides learning objectives, definitions, keywords and key readings. The intended audience is the podcasting novice while the content is also a valuable resource to those with some podcasting experience, who are looking to grow their podcasting skills. It also helps readers that may have engaged with non-medical podcasts and are interested in transitioning to using podcasts for medical education. Written from a multidisciplinary group of authors, this first of its kind book ensures that readers can create a high-quality podcast, evaluate the quality of podcasts they use for their own medical education, curate podcasts into existing medical education curricula, and/or pitch their own academic expertise to medical education podcasts.

Dr. Joanna Parga-Belinkie MD is an Associate Professor of pediatrics and clinical neonatologist at both the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). Her medical education has been bicoastal: from medical school at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, to Los Angeles for residency at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) and neonatology fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She returned to CHOP for her first attending position wanting to be closer to family on the east coast. She enjoys work in media and specifically in podcasting. Her very first podcast was co-created with Dr. Diana Montoya-Williams (also a neonatologist at CHOP/HUP) and was called Baby Doctor Mamas focusing on educating families on infant care. While hosting that podcast, she saw a job posting for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) flagship podcast Pediatrics on Call and answered the ad. She was then interviewed for and was recruited to be a host for that podcast, which has led to opportunities through the AAP including: participating social media videos for families and hosting the AAP National Conference and Exhibition.

Katie Lockwood, MD, MEd is a primary care pediatrician at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. In addition, she is the creator, producer, and host of a medical education podcast called Primary Care Perspectives. She has made guest appearances on podcasts including PedsRAP, Baby Doctor Mamas, Hippocratic Hustle, and more. She enjoys writing and publishes health opinion pieces regularly in Philadelphia Inquirer and has contributed expert interviews to the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and Good Morning America. Dr. Lockwood and Dr. Parga-Belinkie co-founded Pediatric Health Chat, an online resource for families to get expert answers and advice on common medical myths and rumors. Dr. Lockwood completed her BA at Barnard College of Columbia University, her MD at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, her MEd at Monmouth University, and her pediatrics residency and chief residency at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and two children.

Tony Tarchichi, MD, is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, a board-certified pediatric hospitalist, and a member of the Paul C. Gaffney Division of Hospital Medicine at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. He attended medical school and completed his combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. In October 2016 Dr. Tarchichi created the PHM from Pittsburgh podcast on which he hosts expert guests and guides discussions covering topics related to inpatient pediatrics. He has published numerous papers on podcasting in medical education as well as giving talks, leading workshops, and consulting worldwide about podcasting in medical education.