Staying connected in a disconnected COVID world with urology podcasts. A review of the growing trend

ABSTRACT

Introduction: The outbreak of the Wuhan Covid-19 virus has had a significant impact across all industries. How we practice, medicine has seen substantial change. Consequently, medical education has diminished as it has not been deemed essential given the current climate. Here in Australia and other parts of the globe, experienced education restrictions across all the Health Science Universities and university hospitals. Given the substantial research output in Urology and the necessity of local, national, and global conferences, education within the specialty has suffered. Therefore, there has been significant demand for medical education to be delivered through alternative mediums. In contrast to the Spanish flu of 1918- 1920, we have the luxury of modern technology and a plethora of platforms to deliver education in the field of Urology. One such platform is podcasts. Aim: We aim to investigate whether the Urology industry has invested in podcasts since the outbreak of COVID-19 to combat this educational dilemma. Methods: On October 12th, 2021, we searched the term Urology on Spotify. We excluded all non-English podcasts that were not Urology-focused, podcasts that didn't make Urology the focus, and channels that didn't show continued and consistent output, i.e., < 5 episodes. We included all podcasts that focused on Urology education, non-English podcats that were clearly Urology focused (i.e., Anotomia Urologica), and included podcats on sexual health that had a Urology focus (i.e. 'The Full release'). Results: We obtained 97 podcasts on the Spotify search engine using the above criteria. After excluding podcats based on our above methodology, we had 63 results. Of the 63 results, 33 were in English. Out of the 33 in English, one was on andrology, four on urological products, one on sexual health, two on Urology anecdotes, two on prostate health, 14 on general Urology education for trainees, two on urology pediatrics, 3 were patientfocused, three were for guideline updates and one on the news in Urology. Of the 63 podcasts, 53 were created post the outbreak of the COVID-19 outbreak. Conclusion: In conclusion, 84% of educational Urology podcasts today have been created post the outbreak of the COVID-10 outbreak, confirming our hypothesis.