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It is Time to Try Something New!

The internet has revolutionized medical education. Going through medical school– the resources are endless! It’s fun trying to figure out what’s best for your learning style but given the sheer volume of all the great content it can also be overwhelming.

Podcasts became one of my favorite ways to learn while in medical school. The internist in me craves the part of the day when I can listen to the attending think out loud. It’s all about understanding an expert’s thought process so you can begin to develop your own when it comes to cool and complex pathophysiology. Podcasts allow accessibility on demand. What a gift – and there are so many fantastic medical podcasts in production today. I couldn’t be more thankful to the doctors and educators who put their time and energy into providing free and fantastic education for so many of us.

As my career develops and I focus my interests, CardioNerds has become one of my of favorites. They take this concept of listening to experts think out loud to another level. I recently listened to a “CardioNerds Rounds” episode which involved an expert, Dr. Kittleson, sharing her thoughts on challenging hypertrophic cardiomyopathy cases. It was riveting in the way that she laid out a wonderful foundation for those still learning and at the same time discussed nuanced management that doesn’t always follow a script. Now that is cool.

Another aspect of the CardioNerds platform that has been admittedly less approachable for me is the Twitter Journal Club. As a resident, learning about cutting edge research and practice changing guidelines is not only rewarding because it delights my academic curiosity but its crucial in improving patient care. With an unending repository of gigantic new trials that continues to grow every single day, it is difficult to decipher these alone. That it where #CardsJC1 (the CardioNerds Twitter journal club) is magic.

I strongly believe the power of medicine specialties lies within the team aspect. I know our reputation has humorously involved discussing hyponatremia for an hour on rounds, but truly when the whole team is invested in discussing something new or controversial it is so much fun! That is what #CardsJC can provide, experts dissecting and explaining the meaning of a trial so it’s not just taken at face value but what it means for advancing patient care. This is how you learn in medicine, not just by memorizing, but by deepening your understanding; wrapping your head around how something came to be and where it is going. As a second year resident, I found the best teachers are usually masters of their content. This is especially highlighted when your own interns and med students want to learn more about a topic – I’m usually most successful when I take the time to prepare and be intentional.

#CardsJC gives us access to this. CardioNerds is a multimodality digital education platform with a mission to democratize cardiovascular education1,2. They held their first Twitter journal club about a year ago in February 2021. They are thoughtful in involving leading experts, trial authors, guidelines authors, and society leaders in the conversation2. Twitter’s unique platform allows for this innovative new approach to journal club. Additionally, for young learners it can be intimidating to speak up in traditional journal club settings where you barely grasp the basics much less feel comfortable challenging methodology or ideas. Twitter once again allows for anyone to engage on their own terms without the terror of having to raise your hand in a room full of highly accomplished people – we’ve all been there!

In addition to the nuanced conversations, #CardsJC comes with detailed trail summaries, infographics, and carefully crafted tweets1. This is an effective, practical, and revolutionary way for busy participants in all stages of their careers to engage with new data and integrate this into their practice. It’s a way for us to engage in rich discussion with those who may not have been accessible to us in the past. It’s also a way to create great archives of information you can refer to later, especially the trial summaries.

If you were like me and hesitant to engage with this platform in the past because it was unfamiliar – there’s even a video tutorial1! I really enjoyed this because it makes the process simple and approachable. This main #CardsJC page also includes trial summaries from past journal club discussions. Overall, I highly recommend joining the next #CardsJC on March 29th to get your feet wet! It’s sure to be a fantastic discussion about an important upcoming topic – but I won’t give away any clues just yet.

References:

  1. Cardionerds Journal Club – join the conversation on #cardiotwitter! Cardionerds. (2022, January 18). https://www.cardionerds.com/cardsjc/
  2. Dugan, E., Ferraro, R., Hamo, C., Ambinder, D., & Goyal, A. (2021). The cardionerds #cardsjc: How twitter journal clubs elevate the scientific discourse. Journal of Cardiac Failure, 27(9), 1034–1036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cardfail.2021.04.012

“The views, opinions, and positions expressed within this blog are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the American Heart Association. The accuracy, completeness, and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them. The Early Career Voice blog is not intended to provide medical advice or treatment. Only your healthcare provider can provide that. The American Heart Association recommends that you consult your healthcare provider regarding your health matters. If you think you are having a heart attack, stroke, or another emergency, please call 911 immediately.”

 

 

 

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A Graduating Fellows Guide to Pediatric Cardiology Resources

July is an important month for medical education— whether it’s graduating from med school and starting intern year, finally becoming a senior or starting fellowship.  With fellowship ending for me, and starting for many, I started to compile a list of resources for pediatric cardiology to share.

Many of these resources were passed down to me by seniors or mentors, but also many were found on twitter (read more about how you can use this to your advantage in my previous blog). Some emerged recently during COVID-19 in an effort to bring pediatric cardiology together virtually and bridge education gaps for webinars, lectures and more.

For online resources, I recommend creating a folder on your browser and saving sources for easy access later. Another helpful thing for me was saving the links to Moss & Adams, Mayo Clinic Board Review, & Lai echo e-books in this folder so that you can access them anytime and not have to carry the books around(you can find the codes in the front cover of the book).

Below are websites for great lectures, webinars and reading, clinical resources, apps, podcasts, important organizations and ways to find job postings. Enjoy and please share!

Websites for Lectures, Reading and Resources:
Heart UniversityEducational video on pediatric and adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) includes pathology lectures by Dr. Robert Anderson. They also host great webinars on various topics with leaders in the field.
SPCTPD PC-NES (Pediatric Cardiology National Education Series), a lecture series that was started to provide education to fellows during the pandemic— you can access all the previous lectures that were given on various topics with lecturers from around the country, this is planned to continue in the fall.
SCMR– Cardiac MRI case based webinars.
ACHA– ACHD association with webinars on various topics.
Dr. Robert Pass EP lectures; Excellent weekly EP conferences(Mondays 7am EST) with the Mount Sinai pediatric cardiology fellows, past conferences are on this YouTube page and the link to join live is sent via pediheartnet(see below), you can also find Dr. Pass on his podcast(below) and on twitter!
Multimedia Manual of Cardio-thoracic Surgery Surgical videos and descriptions geared towards surgeons but helpful to explain and see common CHD procedures).
Cardiology Notes– Summaries of various chapters from Moss & Adams, Lai Echo, as well as other pediatric cardiology tests and resources.
Parameterz website for Z scores to use for echo, easy to use on desktop or phone
Virtual TEE (Toronto) – TEE simulator.

Podcasts:
Pediheart– Peds Cardiology Podcast hosted by Dr. Robert Pass (above) – review of recent literature and topics usually with a great guest, tune in each week (released Friday) and learn to appreciate Opera too.
CardionerdsMostly geared toward adult cardiology with some overlap to Peds.
PCICS– Cardiac ICU topics and discussion with various leaders in the field.

Apps: (links are to the apple store, but they should be available through google play too!)
EP tools lite– Various EP calculators including WPW pathway localization tool.
Heartpedia Great resource for education for patients, medical students and residents with easy to use interactive diagrams of common CHD and repairs.
Pacemaker Using the patient’s chest XR, snap a picture of the pacemaker and this will tell you who the maker is (Medtronic, St. Jude, etc.)
Practice Update– Follow topics (i.e. Cardiology) and receive virtual “stacks” of the latest literature on that topic with quick reviews and links to full text.
Dimity– Use this app to make patient phone calls from your phone so your number shows up as the hospital line and not your number or unknown. Very helpful for home call!

Conferences/Organizations: all conferences through 2020 are now virtual allowing you to access more content. Remember as a fellow your membership and registration is usually discounted or free, take advantage while you can!
ACC Annually in March.
ASE Annually in the summer (virtual August 8-10) and only $75 for fellows).
PICS-AICS Cath focused conference annually in September.
AHAAnnually in November.
PCICS Annually in December for those interested in cardiac ICU. Bonus fact- they are also hosting virtual meetings on experience and research related to COVID-19 and pediatric cardiac care.
PAC3, PC4 & NPC-QICCollaborative organizations to improve outcomes in congenital heart disease, along with these are great organizations for quality improvement and outcomes research and hold an annual conference along with webinars.
CHOP pediatric cardiology update  Annual dedicated pediatric cardiology conference in February.

Job Postings: below are links to sites that may be helpful as you are looking for jobs, don’t hesitate to reach out to people, have your mentors reach out or cast a wide net, you may find opportunities that aren’t posted.
Pediheartnet- A list server with job postings; this also facilitates discussion between cardiologists around the world, this is the server that the weekly EP conferences (above) will be sent out on and other great opportunities- a must join!
Other sites for job postings-
Congenital Cardiology Today
CareerMD Pediatric Cardiology Job Bulletin
NEJM Career Center ACC Career & AHA Career Centerrefine your search by specialty and receive emails with new postings.

Happy July, and don’t forget to be kind and welcoming to someone new in the hospital, you were there once too!

“The views, opinions and positions expressed within this blog are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the American Heart Association. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them. The Early Career Voice blog is not intended to provide medical advice or treatment. Only your healthcare provider can provide that. The American Heart Association recommends that you consult your healthcare provider regarding your personal health matters. If you think you are having a heart attack, stroke or another emergency, please call 911 immediately.”

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Learning on the Go – Some Podcast Recommendations

As researchers, clinicians, and/or trainees, there never seems to be enough time in the day to get all the stuff done that we want to get done. There seems to always be more papers that we want or should read. One of my favorite ways to try to stay up to date with the latest research publications is listening to podcasts. I enjoy listening to podcasts while commuting and doing chores, and sometimes while working in the lab when no one else is around. Depends on my mood whether I can listen to a podcast while exercising or would prefer to listen to more energetic music.

Below is a list of some of my favorite cardiology podcasts. This is not a comprehensive list and I am not affiliated with any of these podcasts. I also am not endorsing any of the content discussed in the below podcasts. This list is also biased towards those podcasts that are easily accessible via smartphone podcast/listening applications and do not require downloading individual episodes from specific websites. These podcasts are not listed in any particular order.

  • Circulation on the Run: Summarizes the articles published in a specific issue of Circulation and has a more in-depth discussion of a featured article.
  • Discover CircRes: Summarizes the articles published in a specific issue of Circulation Research and also has a more in-depth discussion of a featured article often with the article’s corresponding author as well as the trainee involved in the article.
  • The Bob Harrington Show: Interviews and discussions of various topics in cardiology and the practice of medicine.
  • This Week in Cardiology: Dr. John Mandrola summarizes and provides his insight on some of the top news in cardiology for the week.
  • JACC Podcast: Dr. Valentin Fuster, editor-in-chief of the Journal of American College of College (JACC) provides an overview and summary of the articles published in a specific issue of JACC.
  • Eagle’s Eye View Your Weekly CV Update from ACC.org: A weekly cardiovascular update from Dr. Kim Eagle, editor-in-chief of ACC.org.
  • ACCEL Lite Features ACCEL Interview on Exciting CV Research: Interviews and summaries of some of cardiology’s most interesting research topics, hosted by Dr. Spencer King III.
  • Heart: Summaries of original research, editorials, and reviews from the BMJ’s Heart
  • Heart Sounds with Shelley Wood: Discusses some of the top stories in cardiology covered by the TCTMD reporters.
  • CardioNerds: This is a podcast that I just started listening to. It discusses high yield cardiovascular topics in a case discussion format.
  • AP Cardiology, ACC CardiaCast, Cardiac Consult A Cleveland Clinic Podcast for Healthcare Professionals: Three different podcasts that provide summaries of various cardiology topics.
  • JAMA Editors’ Summary, JAMA Clinical Reviews, JAMA Medical News Interviews and Summaries: Three different podcasts which provide summaries of various medical topics.
  • Annals of Internal Medicine Podcast: Highlights and interviews from a specific issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The American College of Physicians has another podcast, Annals On Call Podcast, which features Dr. Bob Centor discussing influential articles that are published in Annals of Internal Medicine. I have not yet started listening to Annals on Call, but hope to do so in the near future.
  • ED ECMO: Discusses resuscitative extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and extra-corporeal life support (ELS). At the University of Minnesota, cardiologists manage veno-arterial ECMO (VA-ECMO). More to come about this during an upcoming blog!

I am always open to hearing suggestions for new podcasts related to science/medicine or other topics!

 

“The views, opinions and positions expressed within this blog are those of the author(s) alone and do not represent those of the American Heart Association. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them. The Early Career Voice blog is not intended to provide medical advice or treatment. Only your healthcare provider can provide that. The American Heart Association recommends that you consult your healthcare provider regarding your personal health matters. If you think you are having a heart attack, stroke or another emergency, please call 911 immediately.”