EMS providers do not use FOAM for education

BackgroundFree open access to medical education (FOAM, #FOAM) is the free availability of educational materials on various medicine topics. We hope to evaluate the use of social media and FOAM by emergency medical services (EMS) providers.MethodsWe designed an online survey distributed to EMS providers with questions about demographics and social media/FOAM use by providers. The survey was sent to the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) EMS Listserv of medical directors and was asked to be distributed to their respective agencies. The survey was designed to inquire about the providers\u2019 knowledge of FOAM and social media and their use of the above for EMS education.ResultsThere were 169 respondents out of a total of 523 providers yielding a response rate of 32.3%. Fifty-three percent of respondents are paramedics, 37% are EMT-Basic trained, and the remainder (16%) were \u201cother.\u201dThe minority (20%) of respondents had heard of FOAM. However, 54% of respondents had heard of \u201cfree medical education online\u201d regarding pertinent topics. Of the total respondents who used social media for education, 31% used Facebook and 23% used blogs and podcasts as resources for online education.Only 4% of respondents stated they produced FOAM content. Seventy-six percent of respondents said they were \u201cinterested\u201d or \u201cvery interested\u201d in using FOAM for medical education. If FOAM provided continuing medical education (CME), 83% of respondents would be interested in using it.ConclusionSocial medi...