FOAM Quality: #FOAMed Conundrum or Community Challenge?

On Monday, April 27, 2015 we hosted a blog post about the @FOAMstarter project by Rob Bryant. Today, I would like to continue the discussion around #FOAMed with a post about quality. For all the newbies out there, I think it’s important for us to catch you up to the discussions we are having online about FOAM quality, and conveniently, it’s what I’m going to be guest speaking about today!

Today (April 30, 2015), I will be speaking at the University of Calgary’s research day on a very interesting panel with Drs. Rob Orman, James Ducharme, Chris Bond, and Andrew McRae. However, much of the discussion started a few nights ago on April 28, 2015 when Dr. Bond starting barraging #FOAMed leaders with questions in preparation for our discussion today. Below is a Storify with some selected tweets that foreshadowed some discussion points that we were targeting to discuss at the U of C research day.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago, I had the esteemed privilege of also delivering a talk the same topic at the #CORDaa15.

@Brent_Thoma @socmobem probably 3 groups needed to participate incr quality like I said at #cordaa15 – learners, teachers, producers — Teresa Chan (@TChanMD) April 29, 2015

The summary of my talk can be found in the following infographic:

The above infographic can also be downloaded here (FOAM Quality Handout by @TChanMD).

In true #FOAMed spirit, I would now like to invite you to share your thoughts on any of the ideas found in this post. Come out an add to the dialogue, be an engaged citizen of the 21st century – co-create some knowledge here today.

References

Cadogan M, Thoma B, Chan TM, Lin M. Free Open Access Meducation (FOAM): The rise of emergency medicine and critical care blogs and podcasts (2002-2013). Emerg Med J 2014;31:e76–e77. PMID: 24554447

Chan T, Thoma B, Lin M. Creating, Curating, and Sharing Lessons in Online Professional Development: The Medical Education in Cases Series experience. Accepted for publication in Academic Medicine. Accepted on July 3, 2014. (In press). PMID: 25785678

Thoma B, Chan TM, Desouza N, Lin M. Implementing peer review at an emergency medicine blog: bridging the gap between educators and clinical experts. Can J Emerg Med. Online first May 7, 2014. PMID:24742824

Thoma B, Chan TM, Paterson QS, Milne WK, Sanders JL, Lin M. Emergency Medicine and Critical Care Blogs and Podcasts: Establishing an International Consensus on Quality. (In Press) Online First March 31, 2015. DOI:j.annemergmed.2015.03.002

Thoma B, Joshi N, Trueger NS, Chan TM, Lin M. Five strategies to effectively utilize online resources in emergency medicine. Annals of Emergency Medicine. Oct;64(4):392-395. DOI: j.annemergmed.2014.05.029

Thoma B, Sanders JL, Lin M, Paterson QS, Steeg J, Chan TM. The Social Media Index: Measuring the impact of emergency medicine and critical care websites. Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, 16(2), 242-249. PMID 25834664