Eyes for Ears—A Medical Education Podcast Feasibility Study

Background: Downloadable audio files called podcasts have become popular within many areas of medical education. They can be a valuable supplement to traditional teaching methods. Medical educators may wish to incorporate podcasts into their curriculum and disseminate their work to a larger audience, but may not know how. Purpose: We aim to describe the implementation of a novel medical education podcast series for ophthalmology medical student and resident education, and demonstrate feasibility, sustainability, and acceptance of this learning platform. Methods: The Basic and Clinical Science Course (BCSC) textbooks and supplementary texts, were used to create a weekly series of ophthalmology review podcasts. Feasibility markers include time and cost of production. Sustainability measures included download markers over time. Acceptance was measured by reviews on Apple iTunes and Twitter followers. Results: Forty-eight episodes were released from January 10, 2019 to March 31, 2020. Costs included $212.18 startup, and $29 monthly. The podcast has had 122,709 downloads to date (466/month January 2019, increased to 17,500/month February 2020). It obtained 331 Twitter followers, and 114 ratings on iTunes, with an average of 5.0 stars. Conclusions: Medical education podcasts are a feasible way of disseminating educational materials to learners. We demonstrate sustainability and acceptance of this learning platform.