Happy Holidays from BoringEM

In Uncategorized by Brent Thoma1 Comment

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year from BoringEM!

With the holiday season is upon us, I want to take a moment to thank our writers and editors for the exceptional work that they have done over the past year and our readers for making all of that work worthwhile.

This has been an exciting year for the blog. In July, BoringEM implemented a formal review system and transitioned into a true multi-author blog. Dr. Teresa Chan (@TChanMD), who bravely agreed to coordinate the blog as I prepared for my exams, led the development of a robust editorial review process. Eve Purdy (@purdy_eve) and Sarah Luckett-Gatopoulos (@SLuckettG) also deserve credit for facilitating this transition in their respective roles as the first BoringEM Medical Student and Resident Editors. Heather Murray (@HeatherM211) must be recognized for becoming our first member Advisory Board member and frequently serving as an expert reviewer.

While reminiscent of both traditional journal peer review and the system developed by Academic Life in Emergency Medicine [1], the BoringEM Review process incorporates a mentorship model with the ultimate goal of producing high quality content while educating future digital scholars. The combination of editorial review (focused on writing style, flow, and grammar) and expert reviewer (stressing accurate, evidence-informed content), have helped BoringEM to become a credible resource that capably fosters the writing of medical students, residents, and junior clinicians. Academically, we are happy to report that this innovation was the first formally recognized piece of BoringEM Scholarship: a ‘What Works’ abstract describing this program was accepted for presentation at the 2015 CCME conference.

As a multi-author blog BoringEM was able to publish content twice a week (Monday and Thursday) from July through December with the hard work of 27 authors and 13 editors. These efforts increased viewership by more than 150% (pageviews increased from ~100,000 in 2013 to ~250,000 this year). A huge thank you to the authors of those posts and our other contributors:

Patrick Archambault,
Jacob Avila,
Patrick Bafuma,
Chris Byrne,
Teresa Chan,
Erin Dahlke,
Gerhard Dashi,
Alia Dharamsi,
Anton Gervaziev,
Alana Hawley,
Christopher Hicks,
Jatin Kaicker,
Rhomesa Khalid,
Sarah Luckett-Gatopoulos,
A. Ross Morton,
Heather Murray,
Claire O’Gorman,
Alim Pardhan,
Andrew Petrosniak,
Eve Purdy,
Corey Veldman,
Tanya Viaznikova
Aaron Sibley,
Ping Xiong.

Our reviewers also deserve credit for their work – thank you:
James Ahn,
Joanna Bostwick,
Teresa Chan,
Rob Green,
James Huffman,
Nadim Lalani,
A. Ross Morton,
Heather Murray,
Paul Olszynski,
Alim Pardhan,
Andrew Petrosoniak,
Salim Rezaie,
N. Seth Trueger

This website would not be where it is today if it was not for your willingness to give your time and effort in the name of Free Open Access Medical education (#FOAMed).

Looking forward to 2016 we have a ton of exciting plans. Teasers for some of the projects that we are working on include: EMCases cohabitation, and the BoringEM Digital Scholarship Elective.

BoringEM readers, thank you for sharing and engaging with our work. Nothing is more satisfying than knowing that what we are doing at BoringEM has been valuable to you and your patients.

Sincerely,

Brent Thoma
Editor-in-Chief, BoringEM

 References

  1. Thoma B, Chan T, Desouza N and Lin M. (2014). “Implementing peer review at an emergency medicine blog: bridging the gap between educators and clinical experts.” CJEM Apr 1;16(0):1-4. PMID: 24742824.
Brent Thoma

Brent Thoma

Editor at CanadiEM
Dr. Brent Thoma is a medical educator, blogging geek, and trauma/emergency physician who works at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine. He founded BoringEM and is the CEO of CanadiEM.
Brent Thoma