Listening “At the Bedside”: Podcasts as an Emerging Tool for Medical Ethics Education

Medical ethics education is crucial for medical students and trainees, helping to shape attitudes, beliefs, values, and professional identities. Exploration of ethical dilemmas and approaches to resolving them provides a broader understanding of the social and cultural contexts in which medicine is practiced, as well as the ethical implications of medical decisions, fostering critical thinking and self-reflection skills imperative to providing patient-centered care. However, exposure to medical ethics topics and their clinical applications can be limited by curricular constraints and the availability of institutional resources and expertise. Podcasts, among other Free Open Access Medical Education (FOAMed) resources, are a novel educational tool that offers particular advantages for self-directed learning, a process by which learners engage in asynchronous educational opportunities outside of traditional academic or clinical settings. Podcasts can be readily distributed to wide audiences and played at any time, reducing barriers to access and offering a level of flexibility that is not possible with traditional forms of education and is well-suited to busy schedules. Podcasts can also use real voices and storytelling to make the content memorable and eminently human. This paper describes the development, production process, and impact of Core IM's "At the Bedside," a podcast focusing on issues in medical ethics and the medical humanities, intending to supplement standard bioethics curricula in an accessible, relevant, and engaging way. The authors advocate for broad incorporation of podcasts into medical ethics education.