If you are a passionate prehospital clinician, you’re likely following a ton of people who create “educational” content on various social media platforms. This content can fill up your feed and while not all of it is bad, most of it leaves much to be desired in actually teaching you anything. If you are not careful, it can and will have super negative impacts on you. Ask me how I know.
You have to be able to discern between someone who is genuinely sharing information and someone who is posting solely to benefit from your attention.
Are you being educated or are you being influenced? That is the question you have to ask yourself.
My Problem
I found that I was missing some great articles and blogs simply because they were lost in the noise and whatever the wizard behind the curtain was doing with my IG algorithm, I simply wasn’t seeing them. But then I realized something about my list of “following”…I was trying to use social media like an RSS feed, but also allowing for interlopers that polluted the feed.
I wanted to see the big blogs, stories, articles, and editorials, but I didn’t see everything they posted. I found my feed was clogged with trash. I could not possibly care less about dog and vacation pictures or the GRWM nonsense, and I needed a way to separate the good stuff from the performative bullshit noise. Even worse is the new problem of AI generated conclusions and content. I didn’t want to be inundated with content for the sake of creating content (trash posting) from content creators looking to manipulate the algorithm and my attention for their benefit.
I want to be as close to the source material as possible, but I also want different perspectives and expert opinions… the stuff FOAMed was created for.
The Feed and the Fix
RSS feeds for the win. Depending on what you use to create a list, you can get a daily update of the newest stuff out there. No noise. No Tik Tok dances. No GRWM. Just information and expert commentary.
I’ve been a Feedly user for years. If a podcast or blog has a webpage, I can add it to my RSS feed. Even YouTube channels can go on the feed. I can get about 97% of sources on my feed, some just aren’t set up to support RSS.
The feed is a curated collection of sources that ranges from journals to FOAMed. Far from an echo chamber of content creators clamoring for likes and shares as they chase the bright shiny object of the day. Far from ads and far far away from the nefarious manipulation of social media algorithms.
Cut through the noise and the performative nonsense. Build your own RSS feed.
1.) Find an RSS feed platform (Feedly is a good one).
2.) Build an RSS feed for your FOAMed
Here are my top ones to get you started:
FlightBridgeED
EMCRIT
LITFL
St. Emlyns
EMS Loud and Clear
Taming the SRU
Prolonged Field Care
3.) Search out your favorite podcast’s or FOAMed group’s website. Paste it into your feed.
4.) Scroll the feed.
Closing Thoughts
Stop allowing yourself to be manipulated by and algorithm that doesn’t care about you, your goals, or your patients. Go spend 30 minutes reading something with meat on the bones that you are interested in. Go read the sources that inform those blogs.
Social media is entertainment and advertisement, not education.
