PostitMD.com: A Web Based Tool For Resident Education
2008, Volume 1, Number 2 86 Introduction PostitMD.com was born out of the worst natural dis-aster to occur in the history of mainland USA. Fol-lowing Hurricane Katrina, 70% of the New Orleans metro area was submerged under water for four weeks. As a consequence, two major medical schools were shut down for months following the disaster, and as the Program Director of one of the medical schools, it was my responsibility to continue the edu-cation of our residents in the Department of Ophthal-mology [1]. During the first three months following this disaster, we did not have access to teaching mate-rial, and proceeded to search the net for free material. However, this proved futile. I did not find a site that could provide all of the necessary teaching material (clinical pictures, surgical videos on various topics that could be used as teaching material, and multiple choice questionnaires for our residents to prepare for the examinations) to properly educate residents. In other words, the tools necessary to delivery resident education and to satisfy the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) mandate were not freely available. Therefore, PostitMD.com is an attempt to create a free web based service that can provide teaching material to residents and tools neces-sary to run residency programs in accordance with the ACGME/ Residency Review Committee (RRC) man-date [2]. Methods The purpose was to create a website that had the abil-ity to upload pictures, surgical videos, multiple choice questionnaires, and PowerPoint presentations with commentary and insure that this material could easily be accessed on the internet anywhere in the world by anybody. Once these main goals were identified, I studied the web to learn about the current technology that was available. This led to my discovery of two key concepts: one of which was the technology to post pictures and surgical videos (YouTube concept) and the other, to build multiple choice questionnaires from contributions by the viewer/MD (Wikipedia PostitMD.Com: A Web Based Tool For Resident Education Ramesh Ayyala, MD, FRCS, FRCOphth 1* 1 Department of Ophthalmology, Tulane School of Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA * Corresponding Author & e-mail: rayyala@tulane.edu Abstract To create a free web based service that can provide teaching material to all health care professionals, medical students, residents or fellows in training and to help meet some of the ACGME requirements for resident training. Using Flash technology, we successfully built a website with the ability of anybody authorized by the site man-ager to upload pictures, surgical videos and power point presentations with speaker commentaries. Also, this site includes Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ) to be used by the residents in exam preparation. Only questions with the correct answer and explanation can be contributed by residents or other health care providers. We successfully created a website (PostitMD.Com) that has the ability to easily upload pictures and surgical vid-eos of various topics. These can be used to help educate residents or to access the residents' surgical skills, and fulfill the ACGME/RRC requirement to monitor resident progress. Multiple choice questionnaires, online lectures, and grand round presentations will allow residents from around the world to prepare and practice for the examinations. PostitMD.com is a unique website that health care professionals can use to build the largest collection of sur-gical videos, clinical pictures and exam preparation questionnaires of all fields that will be available to medical personnel through out the world. This site is designed to enhance resident self-education and help the residency programs meet some of the ACGME/RRC requirements. Accepted for publication August 11, 2008 Revision received October 19, 2008 2008; 1:86-89 Available via open-access on the web at http://www.academic-ophthalmology.com Dr. Ayyala is the President and CEO of PostitMD.COM, LLC. 2008