Anyone have any success with medical education websites?

[ChristopherMD20]

Hello forum,

I have decided to go out into a community hospital for my practice following fellowship. The one thing that I will miss after leaving academia is the opportunity to teach medical students and residents (not available where I will be). My colleague and I have been in preliminary discussions about teaming up to develop an educational website for our specialty. The initial focus would be content for medical students and residents. If successful we would further expand it to include fellows, CME credit and review material for people not in my specialty that we overlap with (IM, EM, Family Med). The main objective would be to develop a comprehensive video curriculum that focuses on active learning and interactive videos aimed at efficiently teaching learners core clinical concepts. We would offer study guides, test (shelf, inservice and board) prep and a question bank. We are both fellows so neither of us have any "clout" in our specialty. I did not find any of our study sources or qbanks very helpful for boards.

I genuinely enjoy teaching and will probably do this in some form regardless. However, I would be extra motivated if we could generate some revenue to justify the amount of time a project like this will require. Do you think this is something that could generate a little extra revenue via website ads and qbank fees?

 

[q-school]

You can generate some revenue but no way is this likely to be good return on time invested. Why not look for a job that allows more teaching if it is that important to you?

[The White Coat Investor]

ChristopherMD20 wrote:

 

I genuinely enjoy teaching and will probably do this in some form regardless. However, I would be extra motivated if we could generate some revenue to justify the amount of time a project like this will require. Do you think this is something that could generate a little extra revenue via website ads and qbank fees?

 

Click to expand...

Yes. I think you could get a little extra revenue. But like any business, you need to evaluate your competitors. What's out there already and how will your offering be better?

[ChristopherMD20]

q-school wrote:

Why not look for a job that allows more teaching if it is that important to you?

Click to expand...

I seriously considered academia. I may return if this adventure does not work out. The opportunities that I had did not allow a ton of upward mobility for the so-called "medical educator" pathway. My wife and I chose to limit ourselves geographically so we did not have a ton of academic options anyhow. I would've needed RO1s and K-grants, etc. etc. I like writing review articles and book chapters, but do not like doing true academic research. I am better and more passionate as a clinician anyhow. I also had a problem with the pay cut I was asked to take in comparison to non-academic positions. I would've been working just as hard in academia (maybe harder) and be on call 105 nights out of the year for $80k less pay (not including bonuses). It just didn't make sense for me to take the position.

 

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Yes. I think you could get a little extra revenue. But like any business, you need to evaluate your competitors. What’s out there already and how will your offering be better?

Click to expand...

We would focus on active learning as opposed to the traditional powerpoint, sit-listen-take notes style. Rather we would be using a video format with interactive lessons and more animation as opposed to slides and traditional lecturing. I have gone to some grand rounds and other group discussions pointing to the fact that the new generation of med students do not learn the way the older generation did. The new generation (myself included) often listen to lectures on 2x speed at home instead of going to live lectures and they do not read textbooks as much instead they use online resources. We would be appealing to that audience.

We would certainly not be breaking the mold for a Qbank. People love questions so if we can generate higher quality and volume questions we would be ahead of the 2 "big" competitors at least for the board review.

[jz]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCETUw0BssW

Dr. Larry Mellick presents a YouTube channel that I love.

 

[The White Coat Investor]

ChristopherMD20 wrote:

q-school wrote:

Why not look for a job that allows more teaching if it is that important to you? 

Click to expand…

I seriously considered academia. I may return if this adventure does not work out. The opportunities that I had did not allow a ton of upward mobility for the so-called “medical educator” pathway. My wife and I chose to limit ourselves geographically so we did not have a ton of academic options anyhow. I would’ve needed RO1s and K-grants, etc. etc. I like writing review articles and book chapters, but do not like doing true academic research. I am better and more passionate as a clinician anyhow. I also had a problem with the pay cut I was asked to take in comparison to non-academic positions. I would’ve been working just as hard in academia (maybe harder) and be on call 105 nights out of the year for $80k less pay (not including bonuses). It just didn’t make sense for me to take the position.

 

The White Coat Investor wrote:

Yes. I think you could get a little extra revenue. But like any business, you need to evaluate your competitors. What’s out there already and how will your offering be better? 

Click to expand…

We would focus on active learning as opposed to the traditional powerpoint, sit-listen-take notes style. Rather we would be using a video format with interactive lessons and more animation as opposed to slides and traditional lecturing. I have gone to some grand rounds and other group discussions pointing to the fact that the new generation of med students do not learn the way the older generation did. The new generation (myself included) often listen to lectures on 2x speed at home instead of going to live lectures and they do not read textbooks as much instead they use online resources. We would be appealing to that audience.

We would certainly not be breaking the mold for a Qbank. People love questions so if we can generate higher quality and volume questions we would be ahead of the 2 “big” competitors at least for the board review.

Click to expand...

I'm talking online in your specialty already doing this. Have you looked to make sure you're not 4th into this niche?

[Complete_newbie]

1. Figure out total addressable market. Smaller market is fine (subspecialty) but would need high ticket item to be worthed.

2. How would you market it ?

3. Revenue is B2C only from straight buy of program / series ?

Overall get a product like Uworld for step 1. That was a friend of a friend - an Indian doc in Dallas. The rest is history (many here would know how big uworld became/is)

Personally content creation type of business is annoyingly long / painful and requires legit passion. It does lend to repeat rehash on different mediums: books, podcast, videos which turn into streams of revenue based on your audience.

Good luck.

[caprivenky]

Please look at accesssurgery or access medicine
They have everything what you want to create

I would recommend that you could come up with a question or the case of the day and text it your followers
They will attempt to answer it and read the explanation or watch the video attached to the link

One learning point a day , in a busy practice environment can be great help

[MPMD]

This space is absolutely crammed full of:

1. Previously created videos, some of which are high quality

2. Newcomers trying to re-invent the wheel

3. Free content

I would stay out of it. The ROI for your time is god awful.

[ChristopherMD20]

A lot of great insight and food for thought from the forum here. I will continue to do some independent market research. I am all about efficiency and it is becoming more apparent that there is better use of my time. I am intrigued by the idea of creating content for my fellowship subspecialty. Not because it is something to be monetized rather I could use it as active studying for my subspecialty boards this fall.

As always I truly appreciate everyone's insight.

[Kamban]

I used to love teaching students and residents and even got the Golden Apple teaching award a couple of times.

But in a community setting it is difficult to take time off from the schedule to teach the residents and students. I became a clinical asst professor to teach and by year 2 I was disillusioned. I found most residents to really not appreciate the effort it took to prepare a talk in my specialty and dumb it down to their levels.

I now find that coaching / teaching internal medicine attending to be more valuable. The ones who are re certifying for the Boards. They truly appreciate the distilling of MKSAP to the essentials for the Boards. Since I re-certified for the internal medicine boards a couple of years ago I have insight into what the boards truly expect an internist to know about my specialty.

The bonus is a good referring physician who knows I have still the knowledge to keep up with the times.

[ChristopherMD20]

That is a good point. My chief year did open my eyes to how much the residents took a lot of what I did for granted . I am not a subspecialist of internal medicine so I do not know how helpful I will be for MKSAP prep as I don't have first hand experience but it is a great idea.

Have you found medical students to be more appreciative? I do currently but I also grade them so it behooves them to feign interest/appreciation. I'd hate to dedicate extra uncompensated time to people who don't really want to be there.

[Kamban]

Most hospitals now offer UpToDate for free in my area, so trying to develop course materials for your target audience might be a waste of time. There is often a discord between what you think you can do for the residents / students and physicians in community and what they want out of you.

So start slow with this effort. As a newly minted attending, try and build your practice with the time rather than spend hours with developing teaching materials that ends up with no tangible reward.

[q-school]

I am the king of the unmotivated coming to me for help.  Unmotivated may be too strong a word, but definitely have lots of people come without really understanding the work needed to meet their objectives of getting into competitive positions.

no matter how much i stress to them how hard it is, and how they will have to do the heavy lifting, i find myself disappointed with their progress.  It’s like deadlines are suggestions and their business is somehow perceived as being busier than my business.  

teaching is a thankless task in some parts.  For sure a lot of people are where OP is when they finish training.   Only a small few remain brainwashed as life starts to add other parts to their schedule.  Focus on affability, ability, and availability at first.  After that, you will likely have administrative responsibilities and kids.  Only a small percent still have time and energy to teach, and certainly not to do what you have in mind.

With all due respect to WCI, I think it would have been very hard to devote as much time as he has if he were in a surgical specialty with lots of call responsibilities and working basically all day on weekdays.  This is not to say Emergency medicine is easy, but just that it has some flexible features that potentially allow you to explore side interests.  Not all specialties will allow this.

jmo

ymmv

 

[ChristopherMD20]

q-school wrote:

teaching is a thankless task in some parts.  For sure a lot of people are where OP is when they finish training.

Click to expand...

q-school wrote:

Focus on affability, ability, and availability at first.  After that, you will likely have administrative responsibilities and kids.  Only a small percent still have time and energy to teach, and certainly not to do what you have in mind.

Click to expand...

I appreciate the candid response. It is helpful to get wisdom from people who have walked the path. One of my mentors often tells me "you have more energy and enthusiasm than most people, but you haven't figured out how to harness it yet because you try to do too many things." I think this maybe another instance of me getting ahead of myself.

 

Thanks!