Innovation Concept: Free open access medical education (FOAM) is a quickly growing field. While there is an abundance of resources online, and on social media, the quality of those resources should always be questioned and reviewed. Furthermore, as medical learners progress in their training, they become lead consumers and producers of FOAM. Our educational innovation concept was the introduction of two FOAM streams into our residency program to assist learners to produce their own content with mentorship from our emergency medicine faculty. Methods: Medical students and residents training in the emergency department were encouraged to submit content to either our department website in the form of a clinical PEARL, or a research paper to the departmental Cureus online journal. All website content was reviewed by an attending physician and all Cureus content was submitted for further peer review and publication if approved. All published content was shared on social media through our department's Twitter account. A select number of residents were also mentored in reviewing and editing FOAM content and publishing it to our departmental website. Curriculum, Tool or Material: sjrhem.ca is the Saint John Regional Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine's website. A portion of the website is dedicated to posts arising from departmental rounds, case reviews as well as posts from learners in the form of clinical PEARLS. They are designed as succinct and informative clinical summaries and allow learners to share their content to a wider audience online. Cureus.com is an online journal of medical science, with a dedicated Dalhousie Emergency Medicine Channel. The editors are local emergency medicine faculty and senior residents, while reviewers are independent. In the last year, the clinical pearls received 5672 views, and the Cureus channel received 1143 content views. Conclusion: Feedback from learners regarding publication of their own FOAM has been positive and has allowed them to share their content to a much wider audience through our Departmental Website, Cureus Channel and Twitter stream. Furthermore, we are helping to prepare residents to produce their own high quality content, allowing our FOAM program to grow.

Despite the rapid expansion of online educational resources for emergency medicine, barriers remain to their effective use by emergency physicians and trainees. This article expands on previous descriptions of techniques to aggregate online educational resources, outlining four strategies to help learners navigate, evaluate, and contribute online. These strategies include 1) cultivating digital mentors, 2) browsing the most popular free open access medical education (FOAM) websites, 3) using critical appraisal tools developed for FOAM, and 4) contributing new online content.

Introduction/Innovation Concept: Free Open Access Medical education (FOAM) is a rapidly emerging medium for the dissemination of medical knowledge, especially in Emergency Medicine. However, the most contributors to FOAM are EM attendings who write on established platforms which they also maintain. EM learners have difficulty breaking into this quickly evolving field. In an effort to encourage FOAM involvement of trainees early in their careers, CanadiEM recruited 10 junior residents and medical students with the purpose of developing the skills necessary to contribute to FOAM. These Junior Editors actively participate in the blog workflow, developing writing, editorial, and management skills necessary to operate a high-traffic EM website. Methods: Potential candidates were recruited by placing an advertisement and application on the CanadiEM website. 10 medical students or junior residents were invited to online group video interviews and were all accepted as Junior Editors (JE). Senior CanadiEM staff held online training sessions for all new JEs on how to use Wordpress to create, edit and publish posts, as well as basics in Search Engine Optimization. The junior editors collaboratively developed an instructional document containing the information they learned during these sessions. JEs then volunteered for editorial jobs via an online messaging system (Slack) as they became available. After uploading the draft of each post, the final products are reviewed by senior Editor and feedback was given to each JE. Curriculum, Tool, or Material: All JEs have learned to use the Wordpress blogging platform to create, edit, and upload posts; optimize blog posts for search engines. Following their own interests, some JEs have also learned to edit podcasts, promote the blog on social media resources (Twitter and Facebook), create infographics, and copy-edit blog posts. Conclusion: After 8 months, the JE program has yielded 6 very active editors who maintain a strong blog workflow, have well-developed social media skills, and are actively involved in developing their own content for future posts. The JE program is a strong pathway to introduce medical trainees to both the technical and creative aspects of FOAM and serves as a novel approach to transition students from passive utilization of online content to active contributors.