The following is an overview of some of the educational resources available to support your training. Self-Directed learning is an essential part of your training needed to supplement training and clinical practice (in addition to usual Journal clubs, CME, M&M etc). Lifelong learning is a key pillar of high quality modern medical practice, so finding the resources, forming the habits and following a workflow that suits your learning style and life best is important as it will support your practice throughout your career. This page will be updated during the year as a webpage which can be found here.
It is always nice to go back to basics and read an actual, good old fashioned book. Below are some suggestions:
Stay connected with your community of practice and spot emerging learning opportunities
Learn things, network, drink bad coffee and have awkward conversations.
If you still need your category 2 project – go to both Australian conferences for the update courses.
There are only so many minutes in the day, so you need to choose the
papers you wish to read according to importance and your own interest.
Other papers you might skim, yet others you wont even finish reading the
title. Don’t even attempt to read everything, rather skim the table of
contents (set up an email alert via the journal, or PubMed search alert
if specific topics are of interest) and pick your targets wisely,
especially early in training.
The following rough hierarchy is my subjective opinion but may be a
useful guide to the journals to keep an eye on if you’re a bit
overwhelmed. Focus on the top journals first.
General Medical Journals | Often practice changing, review each issue.
Renal: Core journals | Sometimes practice changing, paradigm shifting or high quality & highly impactful
Renal: Additional journals
Renal Fellow Network | The OG Renal educational website, still great.
Precious bodily Fluids | Joel Topf’s blog. Good reads.
Nephron power | Renal blogging, high quality
ASN forums | Great discussions, often tricky cases
History of Nephrology | Neil turner in Edinburgh, great blog
The Bottom Line | Critical care papers summarised in about 1 minute reads.
Life in the Fast lane | Its EM focused, but often useful.
Im a huge fan of podcasts for being an amazing mix of efficiency and quality, improve your nephrology while you commute!
Freely filtered | NephJC podcast, essential listening
Channel your enthusiasm | A chapter by chapter reading of Burton Rose’s Renal physiology textbook
JASN | Alongside KI, the top Kidney Journal, worth keeps an eye on podcast if you cant get through an issue
Curbsiders | Probably best Gen Med podcast – renal episodes often excellent
Bedside Rounds | Medical History and culture
Curious Clinicians | Short episodes, curiosities and discussions about medical practice
IMReasoning | Case discussions
NEJM | Great Journal, reasonable podcast
Medical Journal of Australia | Australian issues mate
Febrile | Infectious diseases
Clinical Conversations | General medical conversations with a Scottish accent
BMJ Best Practice | Gen Med, range of topics
JAMA Editors summaries | Usually reasonably good, once got an editor fired for being uncomfortably oblivious to the nature of systemic racism during an interview.
Lots of scientific podcasts are worth checking out depending on your interests- Nature, NEJM AI rounds etc
If Elon doesn’t run this company into the ground, often an effective way to access small digestible chunks of renal wisdom. It can become a bit of a time sink and suffers from the classic trap of social media – it looks like everyone is always a breathtakingly successful 30 year old Professor, publishing in Nature every week and dreadfully clever after they post a tweet they have spent an hour researching and polishing. It can also become a bit of an echo chamber of academic nephrologists humble bragging and publishing their/institutional/journal/personal brand without adding any value. With that caveat out of the way, there are far too many good accounts to list, and your interests and mileage may vary, as will accounts activity as people’s lives change. If you are going to engage, remember that its a real person on the other side of a tweet so be kind. Your also representing yourself, and sending a message about your institution and department even if you dont mean to, so dont let the side down please.
To get started, maybe check out (in no particular order and recalled at random).
- @askrenal
- @renalfellownetwork
- @nephjc
- @glomcon
- @rheault_m
- @renalgal
- @kidneyboy
- @VeleznephHepato
- @nephrologista
- @womeninnephro
- @nephro_sparks
- @hswapnil
- @nephrodby
- @sophia_kidney
- \#askrenal
- \#NephTwitter
- Stalk your favourite researchers and expand from there according to taste.Other Online resources
Financial stuff
Other tips