The Impact of Educational Resources and Perceived Preparedness on Medical Education Performance.

INTRODUCTION: Undergraduate medical education has evolved necessarily with the increasing utilization of technology and the availability of ancillary resources developed for medical students. However, medical educational resources are expensive and there have been few studies validating these resources for their ability to significantly modify student exam performance. METHODS: A post-exam survey was devised to evaluate medical students for resource usage, student-perceived preparedness, and exam performance. RESULTS: Students who felt more prepared for exams performed better than students who felt less prepared (p = .017). Students who watched didactic lectures online and those who utilized peer-to-peer tutoring outperformed students who did not use these resources (p = .035, p = .008). Analyses of the data show that none of the purchased resources utilized significantly improved student exam performance. The majority of students used between six and eight resources for exam preparation. There may be a slightly negative association with the quantity of resources used and exam scores (p = .18). DISCUSSION: Contrary to traditional confidence studies that correlate overconfidence with underperformance, medical students who reported feeling more prepared for exams performed better than students who felt less prepared. CONCLUSION: Medical students may have a more complete grasp of their knowledge base and deficits, which may enable a more accurate match between exam expectations and academic performance. This post-exam survey method can be customized and applied to evaluate resource utility as it pertains to specific undergraduate medical education curricula at individual institutions.

What's All the Chatter? A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Emergency Physicians' Tweets.

INTRODUCTION: Twitter is growing in popularity and influence among emergency physicians (EP), with over 2200 self-identified EP users. As Twitter's popularity has increased among EPs so too has its influence. While there has been debate about the value of Twitter as an effective educational delivery tool, little attention has been paid to the nature of the conversation occurring on Twitter. We aim to describe how influential EPs use Twitter by characterizing the language, purpose, frequencies, content, and degree of engagement of their tweets. METHODS: We performed a mixed-methods analysis following a combined content analysis approach. We conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses of a sample of tweets from the 61 most influential EPs on Twitter. We present descriptive tweet characteristics and noteworthy themes. RESULTS: We analyzed 1375 unique tweets from 57 unique users, representing 93% of the influential Twitter EPs. A majority of tweets (1104/1375, 80%) elicited some response in the form of retweets, likes, or replies, demonstrating community engagement. The qualitative analysis identified 15 distinct categories of tweets. CONCLUSION: Influential EPs on Twitter were engaged in largely medical conversations in which most messages generated some form of interaction. They shared resources and opinions while also building social rapport in a community of practice. This data can help EPs make informed decisions about social media engagement.