Quality indicators for blogs and podcasts used in medical education: modified Delphi consensus recommendations by an international cohort of health professions educators

BACKGROUND: Quality assurance concerns about social media platforms used for education have arisen within the medical education community. As more trainees and clinicians use resources such as blogs and podcasts for learning, we aimed to identify quality indicators for these resources. A previous study identified 151 potentially relevant quality indicators for these social media resources. OBJECTIVE: To identify quality markers for blogs and podcasts using an international cohort of health professions educators. METHODS: A self-selected group of 44 health professions educators at the 2014 International Conference on Residency Education participated in a Social Media Summit during which a modified Delphi consensus study was conducted to determine which of the 151 quality indicators met the a priori ≥90% inclusion threshold. RESULTS: Thirteen quality indicators classified into the domains of credibility (n=8), content (n=4) and design (n=1) met the inclusion threshold. CONCLUSIONS: The quality indicators that were identified may serve as a foundation for further research on quality indicators of social media-based medical education resources and prompt discussion of their legitimacy as a form of educational scholarship.