Recently, when talking about social media and medical education I have been comparing it to traditional medial education. Some media is locked into one camp or the other. Textbooks are a bastion of traditional medical education. The complexity of writing and publishing a physical book results in a cost structure so high that it can’t given away. Textbook costs for some corners of medicine have risen to absurd prices.
But I have a text book that has crossed over from traditional medical education to FOAMed. By making the Fluid, Electrolyte, and Acid-Base Companion a free download from this site I can get an idea of how much the price of a textbook is a barrier to wide adoption. The Companion went through one print run of 1200 books. We never did a second printing. All of them were sold. Any copies now available on Amazon are only available because of a robust secondhand textbook market. But since September of 2017, I have made the “Whole Enchilada” available for free on this site. The Companion is available as a simple PDF for anyone to download, redistribute, mark-up, and copy.
We sold 1200 printed copies. So how do we do with downloads? We get about half that number every month and have been averaging that for the last 5 years.
The Free in FOAMed is important. But I also think providing the document in a flexible, universal format like PDF that doesn’t require a specific reader app is also important. Remove as many barriers for the user as possible.
Why this post? Because I need a reference for a chapter I’m writing. I know it sounds circular, but a reference to a blog post seems better than “personal communication.” Look for this chapter on nephrology and social media to be published in a textbook in the next year or two.
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