Title

Can you hear me now? Women’s Representation as an Authoritative Voice in Internal Medicine Educational Podcasts

Authors

Bagley P, Rayne A, Conte LM, Monroe D, Stadler DJ.

Introduction

Podcasts and other forms of free open-access medical education (FOAM) platforms are emerging sources of medical education. Licensed physicians are granted continuing medical education (CME) or maintenance of certification (MOC) credits for podcast based education. Podcasts in particular are noted to be easily produced and disseminated, yet there are few external regulations and oversight of their production. Many podcasts specific to internal medicine follow a format of a host and a guest physician reviewing a contemporary or nuanced topic with the guest providing expert opinion or knowledge. As such, medical podcasts may create an image of who becomes the literal or figurative authoritative “voice” of the topic and/or specialty. Our group plans to explore gender representation in popular internal medicine podcasts that were recorded during 2022 to determine the prevalence of women hosts and guests in podcast recordings as well as their word count as a surrogate measure of representation.

Methods

This is a retrospective cross-sectional study of three internal medicine podcasts- The Curbsiders, Annals on Call, and Core IM- to review the genders and speaking distribution of hosts and guests. Podcasts were chosen based on popularity and familiarity in the community. Transcripts and audio files published during the year 2022 were obtained from each podcast’s publicly available website. For unavailable transcripts, the published audio file was transcribed using an online transcription service (www.scribie.com), which were then reviewed in real-time by at least one member of our research team. Hosts and guests of the show were identified as a man or a woman based on their pronouns used during podcast recordings or through publicly available professional profiles. The total gender distribution of hosts and guests was determined. One episode could have multiple guests and hosts. To determine the amount of time spoken by each gender, the total number of words spoken during each podcast was recorded. The total number of words spoken by the host and each guest were separately recorded using word counts. Gender comparisons were done using Fisher's exact test, with statistical significance set at p<.05. (171) This project received institutional IRB approval.

Results

We reviewed a total of 81 CME granting podcast episodes (24 Annals on Call/21 Core IM/ 36 Curbsiders), with a total 559949 spoken words. In the overall analysis, women comprised 35% (n=40) of hosts and 44% (n=42) of guests. Women represented 29% of the spoken word as hosts and reached near parity, with 49% of spoken words as guests. Only one of the original founding members of the three podcast series is a woman.

Conclusion

Women were overall slightly less likely to be speakers and hosts of the podcast reviewed, though their spoken word count as guests, which nears 50% is very encouraging. At a time where podcast-based education is increasingly becoming part of medical school, residency and CME curricula and formal CME, it is essential that women’s voices, representing authority and expertees, are heard by trainees and young physicians alike.

References

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