It seems impossible to keep up with all the new data that's coming out constantly.
And it seems that way because it is impossible.
In reality, it's proposed that medical knowledge doubles every 73 days now.
When you compare it back to 1950, where it took 50 years to double, you can see why it's such a challenge, right?
And the really thing is, you can never read everything.
You can't just try to do more because there's literally not enough hours in a day to stay up with the medical literature.
However, if you are a professional or someone who's very interested in staying up with this, there are ways to make it more accessible and easier for you.
And in this talk today, I'm going to teach you how to build a system that works for you.
So, you can be confident that you're not being left behind.
So, let's dive in.
So, in general, there are two main ways of getting information.
The first is something called just-in-time learning, where you solve a specific problem at the time where you need it.
So, for example, you're in the clinic, you need an answer to something, a clinical question right away.
You look it up at that time.
And it's necessary for any professional, and it actually can be a really good way of learning.
It leads to high retention because you immediately apply it.
But, however, we're not talking about that today, right?
Because that's important, but it has its limitations, and you only look for what you look for.
And so, we're going to look for a different approach, more of a what I call a gardening approach, meaning you're kind of
A little bit more general, trying to foster a culture of learning and see what comes up.
And really, this is an important idea, you know, because I kind of call it just-in-case learning.
So
You want to find important information for you that may be important for you and your patients going forward, and so this is broadening your horizons and seeing what kind of peaks your interest.
So, there are two different types.
We're going to talk about the latter here: about finding, making sure you're not missing a ton of big things.
And this can be an incredibly complex process, or it can be super simple.
It just depends on your flavor.
When it comes to this, I'm kind of a nerd, and so I geek out about this.
And so I'm.
More towards the optimizer side of things, however, you do not have to be an optimizer or super tech-savvy at all to stay up to date with the medical literature.
And so, I'm going to give you options for whether you're a minimalist who just wants everything done for you or
You are someone who wants to fully optimize this and want a perfect system that produces customized learning just for you.
I've got you covered either way.
We're going to go through some free and paid options to kind of make sure you're staying up to date.
So, the easiest thing in general, we take a step back, is just pick a journal, a medical journal, and say that's going to be a resource, right?
So, that's.
Totally fine.
There are issues with this, that's for sure, because it's very narrow to that one journal, right?
And you're only going to have that narrow focus, but.
Religiously looking at a journal, even though it's just one, is better than not doing anything, right?
So they can be helpful if that's all you want to do.
But if you're watching this, you probably want a little more, right?
So that's what we're going to do.
We're going to talk about that.
The next step then would be you can do something called subscribing to an electronic table of contents or ETOC.
Essentially, what you're doing here is that you receive an email every so often with the headlines from the newest issue of journals of your choosing, right?
So you can subscribe to multiple things.
It's nice because you can sign up for multiple journals.
For example, the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA or the AFP, they all have them.
And this doesn't guarantee you have full access, though, I will say.
But at least you can see the headlines, then it can try to obtain the full access through your institution or personal account if you want to read that.
So, definitely,
Very simple, almost zero friction arrives in your inbox.
Typically, it's free.
And on top of that, this does allow for some serendipity, right?
Where you might read an article about something you didn't know existed.
That was in the table of contents.
However, once again, you are prone to tunnel vision as you only see the specific content that the editorial board thinks is important.
And it's okay to trust in societies and do that, and that's totally fine.
But you just got to remember that.
And it can be overwhelming if you subscribe to a lot of journals.
So you're just getting blasts all the time and you feel overwhelmed.
And so that's something to consider as well.
Next, I want to go into a little bit higher here, a little more complex.
We're going to start getting into more targeted curation for your learning.
So the first thing I'm going to do is talk about some paid services where you're essentially throwing money at a problem, which is okay, right?
That's a valid and
Fine way of doing things, but you're going to pay experts to scan literature for you and then summarize these findings for you.
The most common example of this is the New England Journal of Medicine's Journal Watch, is what it used to be, but now it's called as.
Any JM clinician.
And so essentially, what happens is a board of physician editors scan hundreds of journals and write concise summaries of the most practice-changing studies.
The pros for this is that it's highly efficient, right?
This is probably your highest yield per minute.
So reading this for 30 minutes a week.
Covers more ground than ours of just browsing or scrolling, right?
And additionally, you get a wider breadth of context as experts explain why the studies matter.
For Khan's perspective, it does require a subscription about $100 per year, is what they currently list it at.
But once again, that's reasonable for some people, potentially.
And you are, once again, trusting other people to decide what is clinically relevant and important to you.
And so.
May not be a perfect fit.
However, this is just a wonderful way to kind of just set it and forget it and make sure you're not getting too far behind.
Can be a very useful tool.
Next, we have a service called Read by QXMD, which is owned by Medscape.
This is starting to get into more of a social media type feel, but it's for academic papers.
What you can do here is you can specify your specialty, like internal medicine, or you can talk about your specific interests.
And then this app uses an algorithm to show you training papers based on what your peers are reading or what you have previously enjoyed.
Another cool feature is that if you actually have institutional login, you can include that here.
So you can get access to the full text articles if you've entered your credentials.
So you can look at the app, find one you want.
Read it, and if you have access, you can read the full text there, which is wonderful.
It does have a nice user experience and does kind of feel like social media style.
For some people, it feels like that.
You know, I personally do not like social media feel, but some people like that and it can be helpful.
And it can pull in all of your favorite journals in one place, which is great.
On the other hand, though,
Although, once again, it is nice, it is algorithm-based.
And so you're going to see what's popular, not necessarily what's important to you.
And it is free, which is wonderful.
But when you're free, that means that
You're also the product.
And so there's probably monetizing your reading data, consumption patterns, doing all those things.
Just wanted you to be aware about that.
And finally, we have maybe the nerdiest version of this, is what I'm going to do.
This is overall just a brief overview as we can go way deeper on this, but this is the solution for the do-it-yourselfers out there.
So, essentially, with this path.
you can build a custom pipeline that delivers exactly what you want in a pretty streamlined experience.
But the thing is, it takes a little bit of work and maybe a little overwhelming for some people.
The biggest thing you're going to need is PubMed.
So, PubMed is a huge database where pretty much all the academic literature is stored.
And then you're going to need something called an RSS reader, like Feedly is an example, or Zotero is a reference manager that I use that also has RSS.
RSS, just to take a step back for the non-nerds out there, stands for Really Simple Syndication.
And you may have not ever heard of this, but I can almost guarantee you have used this technology at some point.
It's the technology that podcasts use to get new episodes out every week.
So, the nice thing about
RSS feed is: you only get what you ask for, and everything you want is going to come to you.
So, there's no algorithm telling you what you should be listening to, what you should be watching.
It's just if you sign up for it, you're going to get it.
And essentially, if you sign up for this, you are once again going to get it delivered to this RSS feeder.
So, once you set it up, though, it's really not that complicated.
You just need to go to PubMed.
Build a search that you are interested in, that you want to be alerted for.
So, for me, I currently have one set up for just platelet-rich plasma or PRP.
And then you create, after you do this custom search, you can create the RSS feed on PubMed.
And then all you have to do is take that link.
Of the RSS feed and link it to your RSS reader, like Feedly, or to I use Zotero reference manager, and then you get a dynamic news ticker that updates automatically.
And so
It updates usually whenever new papers are published that match your criteria.
And once again, I know this sounds super complicated, but it's not that bad at all.
If you want a dedicated video specifically about how to do that.
Please let me know.
I'm happy to do it.
But for most people, their eyes are already glazing over.
So, the pros to this is you get lots of wonderful, specific things you want to look at.
So, for example, if you care deeply about endothelial dysfunction, you will get alerted anytime those words are published in PubMed.
That can be very helpful for you.
It can be wonderful.
However, it can also be overwhelming if you choose too broad of a search term.
So, my biggest recommendation is to really narrow down your search term for this.
On top of that,
There is no processing or filter, right?
So you're going to get raw information, and you have to decide whether the study is good or bad or worthwhile, which can also take up a lot of your time.
The biggest thing I can say is it can be overwhelming.
If you are too broad, like even Plate Rich Plasma is too broad, but you can get that, you'll get everything you mentioned.
So you just always have to be kind of conscious and aware of that.
But it can be a wonderful thing if you want to be.
The expert.
You want to know everything about this one specific topic, can be really wonderful.
As I mentioned, very nerdy, but I wanted to include that.
And finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't include social media and podcasts to stay up to date.
System, there's no shortage of information on social media, but this one's definitely the biggest wildcard of them all because the barrier to entry is so low.
For some of these things like podcasts and YouTube, you may have to spend more time vetting for specific sources to see if they're trustworthy or not, right?
So, after all, they let people like me make my own videos and do my own podcasts.
Am I really to be trusted?
That's only you can answer that one.
Hopefully, I am.
Hopefully, you trust me.
But anybody can do that, and you have to think about it.
But there are some really popular ones on the world in terms of
Obviously, we have Xer Twitter.
We have podcasts, YouTube, and ViewMedi.
Specifically on X, there's a hashtag specifically Med Twitter, where there's a lot of people and clinicians sharing stories and teachings and doing some really helpful things out there.
But for me personally, that website is an absolute cesspool.
So I try to avoid it like the plague.
That's just pretty much my approach for all social media is avoiding it.
But it can be really helpful.
I know a lot of people have had good success.
But if that's someone's jam, that's totally fine.
No worries, but I just want you to be warned.
And of course, we have podcasts, which there's so many to choose from.
Some of the most popular ones in medicine include the Curbsiders, Clinical Problem Solvers, EM Crit, Core IM, a ton of really popular ones.
And on top of that, we also have video platforms, which obviously everyone knows YouTube.
That's just ubiquitous.
But there are other platforms, specifically one called ViewMedi, which describes itself as a video education platform for doctors.
And yeah, here the videos are typically a little more clinically focused and targeted, but it can be really nice because you can get into some deep dives there.
As on top of that, you can have niche topics and just more focus at clinicians.
But obviously,
There's lots of different ways.
And so I'm obviously biased as I'm involved in this community in terms of podcasts and social media, in terms of YouTube and whatnot.
But I think it can be a great way to augment your learning.
And I do think that this should probably never be your only way of learning, right?
So you should always verify and vet your sources.
But I just wanted to at least mention that I think it can be helpful.
And so, obviously, this was not an exhaustive list of resources you can have.
I left off probably thousands of resources that you could use, but I really wanted to give you a framework and understand the general idea of how to say up-to-date literature.
That's the biggest thing, right?
I made this talk specifically based on a question I had from one of my residents.
They asked, Hey, how do you stay up with medical literature?
I didn't have a great answer at that time because it was at the end of the lecture I was giving, and I could talk about it for much longer and I didn't want to do that, but I.
It got me thinking that I wanted to provide a concise resource for people so that they can continue their education and, more importantly, become better clinicians, or, you know, if patients want to do this as well, be better informed patients.
