Today, I am adding more sites to the CFOAM page found at the top of the blog. Remember that FOAM stands for Free Online Access to Medicine and is a movement that seeks to utilize the full potential of the internet for medical education. In order to make it as FOAM, a web site must be free, provide useful education on a medical topic, and be easily accessible online. This can (and does) include audio podcasts, video lectures, and written articles and blogs. If the content is relevant to correctional medicine, well, that’s CFOAM: Correctional Free Online Access to Medicine. Today, I am adding three more CFAOM websites to the list.
Ted Talks
Ted Talks. Ted Talks is a large (over 1700 and counting) collection of video lectures on nearly every topic you can imagine. What is especially cool about this site is the time limit. The speakers have 18 minutes—no more—to make their point. Ted Talks has Nobel Laureates and celebrities among their speakers, but it doesn’t matter how important or famous you are. 18 minutes, period. They obviously also screen for quality, as well. I’ve listened to several of these, and they are really good. The link I have provided is to the browse screen. You can easily use the topic button to pull up the lectures about medicine, or prisons. Once you get started, I guarantee that you will range far afield—the content is vast.
Khan Academy
The Khan Academy. You may have already heard about the Khan Academy; it has gotten quite a lot of press. The Khan Academy’s mission is to provide education online—for free. It is backed by the Bill Gates Foundation, so does not charge at all for its lectures, nor are there any annoying ads to wade through. Similar to Ted Talks, the lectures are short: most are less than 10 minutes. The site has more than 4,800 lectures on a wide variety of topics. Their medical partner, assigned the responsibility of coming up with the medical content is the Stanford School of Medicine. The medical lectures are few in number (so far!) but very good.
Infographics
Infographics is a way of representing information visually with the idea that, by combining visual images with written information, readers can retain more in their memory. I think it works. There are many excellent infographics available on the internet. Here are three cool medical and correctional infographics that have come my way recently. These were created as a way of attracting visitors to their respective websites. But you can find many others by simply using your browser to search for “medical infographics.”
Do you know of any really great free online sources of medical information? Please share in comments!
There is a great [imho] site with a great deal of free information – http://www.QuantiaMD.com – multiple subject areas; most are 6 – 16 minutes with some as long as an hour (usually Cat 1 CME). There are also series on specific subjects. Most is not directly about corrections but much is applicable.
Thanks, Al! It goes into my next CFOAM post.
Did you see Edgar Barens’ “Prison Terminal” on HBO? About the hospice at Iowa State Pen. Can see
most of it on YouTube. Incredible documentary to a very real side of corrections that seldom reaches such a vast audience.
Thanks, Gail! I have not seen it–but I’m going to!