Nephrology fellows report higher usage of digital education resources since pre-pandemic
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Nephrology fellows have reported an increased usage of digital education resources since 2016, according to survey results published in Kidney Medicine.
Further, 83% of fellows said they felt their education was sustained throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a cross-sectional survey, Benjamin S. Ko, MD, from the University of Chicago, and colleagues evaluated the use of digital educational resource among 920 current adult and pediatric nephrology fellows in 2021.
Researchers designed the survey after a previous study in 2016, using questions to measure fellows’ educational resource usage, perceived effectiveness of each resource they utilized and rating of the education quality in the programs. Categories of resources included traditional (eg, textbooks), digital-paid (eg, UpToDate) or digital-Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAMed) (eg, NephJC).
Researchers also observed intracohort differences based on medical school (international vs. U.S.) and age (aged 33 years or younger vs. aged 34 years or older). Responses to the 2021 study were compared with those of the 2016 study using chi-squared tests to provide an understanding of how the past 5 years impacted the primary outcome.
Among the 920 survey recipients, 501 responded. Compared with the 2016 responses, UpToDate remained the most used (82%) and highly rated (66%, “very effective”) resource. Eighty-three percent of participants rated the quality of their education as “good” or “excellent,” 83% said their education was sustained throughout the pandemic and 87% reported they were prepared for independent practice upon graduation.
Although U.S. and international medical graduates showed similar traditional resource usage, graduates from the U.S. reported higher usage of digital resources. This trend of traditional resources was similar across age differences, yet younger graduates reported a higher usage of digital-FOAMed resources.
Analyses revealed that the use of digital resources increased from 2016 to 2021. While 7% of fellows reported using NephJC in 2016, that percentage rose to 32% in 2021. Similarly, 27% reported using KSAP in 2016, and 58% reported using it in 2021.
Of the new resources available since 2016, fellows reported NephMadness as the most used and NephSIM and GlomCon as the highest rated for effectiveness.
Researchers noted that they did not assess how often fellows used resources, nor were they able to judge the self-reported confidence against actual board scores. Future studies are needed to address these limitations.
“Our findings underscore the need for critical appraisal of quality of novel digital resources like FOAMed. Future studies should focus on 1) applying validated tools to assess FOAMed content and reliability, and 2) measuring hard outcomes (eg, certification exam scores) among users and non-users,” Ko and colleagues concluded.
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