As teachers, having video and images that help convey clinical material is invaluable. It’s not possible for every student to see every procedure, or to provide one-on-one tutorials every time someone needs a refresher. There are multiple sources of these resources online, but the most easily found (e.g., YouTube or Google image search) sometimes have terms of use placed around them that limit their use, or worse have been placed their without the copyright holder’s permission. When dealing with video and images that show patients, we must be particularly careful to make sure that the appropriate consent has been given before using that video.
This can be a lot of work, so how can we make it easier? This earlier post gives some advice for images in particular, but where else can we look?
Start by using the resources subscribed to by the library. Often, subscriptions allow access to multimedia content that can be downloaded or embedded in teaching resources, provided they are only made available to students of the university. The library has subject guides for many disciplines that give advice on some multimedia resources that are specific to each discipline (search for your department or discipline here). A good example is the multimedia page on the Medicine subject guide.
Another tool you can try is Clinical Key – which can let you limit search returns for multimedia content by using the filters. As the library subject guide says:
Access ClinicalKey here. Find more information here. If you want to download content e.g. as a PDF or for a presentation, you need to log in – registration is free. The registration link is on the top right side of the screen.
There are also a number of open libraries for multimedia content under the ‘Free Open Access Medical Education’ movement, also identified by the hashtag #FOAMed. Try searching Twitter, Facebook or Google for some ideas. Please suggest any that you find useful in the comments. As a starter, try:
- Radiopaedia: a free educational radiology resource with one of the web’s largest collections of radiology cases and reference articles
- Life in the Fast Lane: a medical blog and website dedicated to providing free online emergency medicine and critical care insights and education. In particular:
Lastly, this post on integrating #FOAMed in Medical Education is worth a read for some more ideas
Contact your eLearning Facilitator or Subject Librarian for more advice. Good luck!
