%0 Journal Article
%T Writing to learn on the wards: scholarly blog posts by medical students and housestaff at a teaching hospital
%A Farrin A. Manian
%A Felicia Hsu
%J Medical Education Online
%D 2019
%R https://doi.org/10.1080/10872981.2018.1565044
%X ABSTRACT Background: Informative writing is a valuable tool for learning and fostering the scientific process. Pearls4Peers (P4P) is an educational open-access website dedicated to scholarly blog posts in hospital medicine based on questions raised during ward teaching rounds. A goal of P4P is to enhance the learning experience of medical students and housestaff (i.e., interns and upper-level residents) by inviting them to write blog posts for a worldwide audience. Objective: To describe our experience with inviting medical students and housestaff to contribute blog posts to a clinically oriented educational website with the aim of promoting concise evidence-based informative medical writing. Design: Medical students and housestaff assigned to the hospital ward team of an attending physician (FM) on the medical service were routinely invited to submit one or more posts or ¡®pearls¡¯ based on clinical questions raised during patient rounds. Selected features of submissions during the first 2 years of P4P (27 June 2015 through 26 June 2017) were then retrospectively reviewed and analyzed. Results: Of 156 pearls posted during the study period, 25 (16%) were contributed by medical students and 16 (10.3%) by housestaff. Medical students were significantly more likely to contribute than housestaff (19[70.4%] vs. 11 (9.6%], p < 0.01). Superfluous information was noted in 12 (29.3%) submissions. Word count exceeded the suggested limit of 200 words in 12 (29.3%) cases. An inverted pyramid structure, a widely recognized web writing format with the most important information presented at the outset, was noted in only 17 (41.5%) of entries. Unsolicited comments by contributors suggested a positive learning experience in writing the posts. Conclusions: Writing clinically oriented concise blog posts appears feasible and may be an effective tool in enhancing the ward-based learning experience of medical students and housestaff. More formal instructions on the proper content and structure of blog posts seem warranted
%U https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10872981.2018.1565044