For Christopher Demas MD’21, it all started with Illustrations of Histology, a YouTube lecture series that he created as a student in Brown’s Medical Education Scholarly Concentration to help first-year students master the material.
“Every stage of the training can be stressful in its own way, and I realize that I’ve always looked for ways to make it a little easier,” he says of his interest in medical education.
As Demas explored various teaching methods as part of the scholarly concentration, he says he was inspired by a session on podcasting in medicine led by Julie Roth ’99 MD’04 RES’05 F’09, an associate professor of neurology and assistant dean of medicine, PLME advising, who had created a podcast for neurology residents (see Medicine@Brown, Spring 2019).
“I used podcasts and audio learning regularly in med school,” Demas says. “You can gain valuable learning during times when you might otherwise be less productive—such as while driving, exercising, or doing chores.”
Podcasts can be a “crucial resource” for residents working long hours, Demas says, and studies have found them to be as effective as lectures and written curricula. Yet as he prepared to start his pediatrics residency at the University of Michigan, “I noticed that there were no podcasts geared towards early pediatric resident training,” he says. “On my first day of intern year, I came in with a proposal.”
Demas performed a needs assessment to better understand what would help his fellow residents learn. By his third year, his podcast First Pediatrics was up and running with its first episode, on bronchiolitis.
Now chief resident, Demas says that patient cases offer particularly meaningful lessons. “The patient is the teacher and their stories are invaluable,” he says.
Each episode features a case based on real patient encounters. As if in a real conversation before rounds, Demas and a guest “unpack the case to highlight key learning points.” Though the conversation seems natural, each episode is carefully scripted and undergoes many edits. He also works closely with faculty to fact-check each episode.
“The process to make an episode is rigorous, but that’s ultimately what makes any good educational content high quality, is having a lot of thought and a good process into creating it,” he says.
