Digital Education Manifesto - 1_5_25, 8.05 AM

Greetings. Hello, everyone. Thanks as always for listening. This is Patrick Georgeoff. And today I want to talk to you about making really cool surgical education content, more specifically, how you can use tech to elevate your surgical education game. And this episode is born out of a question that we often get, and that's, how can I make digital education content?

So let's start with a real simple question, and that is, what is missing from surgical education. So there's, there's a lot, of course. Uh, but to me, there's really one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb. And it's not the stuff that we discuss a lot, like autonomy and wellness and evaluations and hours, all super, super important stuff.

But to me, what's missing is surgical education content. You know, the actual content designed to ensure learners learn what they need to. And so we all know that to be a good surgeon, you gotta show up,

You have to take part in service learning, all the hours, the rounds, the clinics, the cases, all of it.

But you also need to read and listen and watch in order to prepare and in order to grow and to be better. And it's the last part, that reading, listening, and watching, where I feel like we are, you know, as a specialty, wildly behind. Especially in 2024, especially when there has been a true democratization of technology.

Where is? So you can consider this episode a brief behind the knife manifesto of sorts. Again, trying to get to this question of how you can make surgical education content. To do this, we will use the behind the knife experience to set the stage before talking about specifics. So at Behind the Knife, we try our best to make great surgical education content.

We don't always succeed, but we're trying here. And, uh, Our formal mission is to create innovative surgical education

content that is accessible to all. And to do this, we leverage what is now really widely available technology. And we've leaned into this by creating a full fledged surgical education platform that includes a bespoke media builder that allows us to create really fantastic and complex material.

Now the goal of all this is to attract the master surgical educators out there. You all know them, every institution has them, the real phenomenal educators, but they're really siloed off and hidden from the world. We want to offer them the BTK megaphone and support their work in as many ways as we possibly can.

So with this platform and some of our social media shenanigans, we're able to put out podcasts, videos, illustrations, and written material. In fact, the podcast itself is the number one surgery podcast in the world. We have more than 800 episodes, over 20 million listens, over And we've got an international audience and our video library is growing

rapidly.

And we all know that surgical education is an inherently visual task. And we know that millennial and Gen Z learners prefer video over text, but high quality video is really hard to find. In fact, a recent study showed that the number one resource that surgery residents use to prepare for cases is YouTube.

Which makes sense. And there is some good stuff on YouTube. There's also some not so good stuff on YouTube. So you know how kind of scary that can be. And this is a big deal, obviously. What residents, maybe even staff, are using to prepare to do actual surgery. And when it comes to videos, we have a lot of fantastic content.

Now the crown jewel of our video collection is probably our trauma surgery video atlas. This includes 24 challenging trauma cases filmed with fresh, profused cadavers and a variety of different video angles. And the project fills a massive void in trauma education. So before this, there were really no high quality video, certainly none in the

trauma realm that showed in high death step by step, how to approach the gnarliest of traumas.

So if you just think about it, the worst traumas typically come in at around 2 a. m. They're often there with the skeleton crew. You can't see anything once you get to the art because the patient is trying to bleed to death on you. If you don't act quickly, the patient may die. So you really have to be prepared.

And if you're lucky, maybe you get to take an Adam or an asset course. Oftentimes these are one off and I certainly hope that everyone listening has read top knife, but these resources are not enough for the rare deadly sphincter tightening trauma scenarios. The things like neck explorations, IVC injuries, subclavian arteries.

These are challenging cases that need to be dealt with with skill, um, And here's the thing about this is why I'm blabbering on and on is that this project was completed entirely by tech novices help my wife, Lisa Georgia, who's also behind the knife's director of operations,

taught herself how to edit video with no prior experience and then taught me how to do it just so we can get this project off the ground and finished and if folks like us can do it, then you absolutely can do it too.

And one last kind of example of our more recent projects. Uh, that highlights how media can come together into a single resource is our Dominate Surgery student content. So this includes to the point text, original illustrations, podcasts, videos, and flashcards. And the project was designed to fill a huge gap in student, and by student we mean both medical and APP, uh, students.

It was designed to get them ready for their surgery rotation. It's meant to be engaging and highly practical. It's something that allows students to learn. the art and the science of surgery. And if not excel on the rotation, at least feel more comfortable, you know, when they're there with us, working with us in surgery.

And this project was spearheaded by one of our amazing social education fellows, Nina Clark. Nina has had no formal tech

background or training, but was able to absolutely dominate this project with tools that are available to literally everyone listening to this podcast. So we talked a lot about behind the knife and You know, that establishes what we do, but what does this mean for you?

What it means is that you, you know, everyone listening can pretty much make any type of content you like nowadays, even if you're part Luddite. And that's because of the democratization of technology, which means that technology that was once really expensive, uh, rare, difficult to get your hands on or use is now available and, uh, easily used by the average Joe.

So let's start by reviewing what you do not need. to create and distribute great content. You do not need a publisher. You do not need advanced computer skills. You do not need lots and lots of money. You do not need fancy hardware. All that is out there. You can go on Amazon. You can watch YouTube videos to learn how to use computer

software.

If you have a laptop, you're on your way. So what do you need then to create and distribute great content? You need an idea, an audience, passion. and expertise. And these are things that everyone who's listening has. You all have ideas about ways to improve surgical, uh, care, uh, and education. You have an audience, whether you're a medical student, you have an undergrad audience.

If you're a resident, you have a medical student audience. If you're a chief resident, you have a junior resident audience. If you're attending, you have a resident audience, et cetera, et cetera. You have an audience. And if you're passionate, your audience will listen. And when it comes to the expertise, you also already have that, you are your own expert, you know, if you're an intern, you know the pain points of being an intern, you know what stresses you out, and chances are if it stresses you out, if it's a difficult part of the surgical training experience, then it's probably that way for others too.

So what can you make when it

comes to digital education content? So sure, you can make videos, you can make podcasts, that's great. You can also enhance your lectures. You can enhance journal articles, textbook chapters, your grant application, patient education material. A colleague of mine recently went on an absolute tear after spending fairly minimal time online playing with a few software programs, and she created a new logo for her lab, and a really excellent illustration for a recent grant application, and cut a video, an interoperative video, for use in a resident lecture.

And all the material turned out great. fantastic and again, really raised the bar of the work that she's already doing. And like anything else, the more time you spend with technology, the more your skillset grows. So really in the end, the biggest barrier to creating content is time, which of course, for most everyone listening to this podcast, you do not have much of, and certainly I can fully appreciate that.

But just like anything else, if you're

able to spend little chunks of time, uh, over longer periods of time, then growing that. And learning, growing that skill set and learning, you know, that, that quickly adds up. So with that, what tools should you use? So let's start with the hardware. There's nothing special here.

You know, you have a good laptop, a smartphone, maybe a USB mic or even ring lights. The ring lights legitimately help with lighting for video. They're around 10 or 15 bucks on Amazon. These are the pieces of hardware that you need. When it comes to software, You can use audio editors like GarageBand, which comes preloaded on all Macs, so it's free.

And Audacity, which is free for Mac and PC. Quality video editors like Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere Pro come at a price, but they don't exactly break the bank. For example, Final Cut Pro for Macs is around 300. Now, what about AI specific software? You know, this is such an exciting time. to watch this AI software

just explode.

It seems like every single week there is a new incredible use case, uh, new technology. And so we should start with the frontier large language models. These are the large language models that are being aggressively developed by the big tech companies. Some like Gemini from Google are free and others like ChatGTP require you to pay for their premium models.

But it's really amazing to think that these models are being developed in real time. And they're immediately being made available. to the public. So like the internet and Google search, these frontier LLMs are practically public utilities already. You know, albeit extraordinarily powerful ones. So if you have not already sat down and played with one of these models, you really should do it.

It's, it is mind boggling. And if you, you know, feel nervous about getting started, if you just spend a small time in front of these LLMs, You will rapidly see how useful and helpful they can be, and specific use cases that

are, uh, tailored to you. Uh, and the only way you can do that is by messing around with them a little bit.

There's other AI specific programs, including text to image or text to video, like DALI, Runway, and MidJourney, and these are incredible. Of note, though, you know, as of, as it is, as it is currently. And when it comes to surgery and anatomy, these text to image software programs are really limited in terms of our space in surgery and surgical education.

They certainly make these amazing fantastical type images that are eye catching. They're great for lectures and logos and other things like that, but not so much for anatomically accurate or intraoperative type images. Thank you. And there are some classic software that has become heavily infused with AI and outcomes have really been excellent from that.

Things like the Adobe suite of products and even Microsoft Copilot. A lot of healthcare

institutions use Microsoft as their primary, um, you know, operating system. And, uh, folks, uh, have reported that Copilot can be really, really great, for instance, when working on grants and other things like that. Now, if you make something You also want to distribute it, and that has never been easier with programs like YouTube, X, Instagram and TikTok for now, at least, you know, you have Amazon self publishing, Shopify and independent media like Spotify, Buzzsprout and even Substack to get your content out there to folks who want to consume it.

And all this creates something called the creator economy of which the development of social education content is the tiniest of slivers. So the creator economy is a software driven economic ecosystem where creators produce and distribute content products or services directly to their audience. So like I said before, no publisher, no producer and

relatively minimal monetary investment.

So what do we use at Behind the Knife to make economic content? So when it comes to podcasts, we use Apple, GarageBand and Descript. So GarageBand is, again, as I mentioned before, a standard audio editing software. It's very easy to use. It's easy to learn. Descript, on the other hand, this is a newer piece of software.

It's pretty impressive. So, for example, when we record a podcast, we pull that file into Descript, where it transcribes the entire thing. If we want, we can translate the text into different languages. We can also, which is a click of a button, remove all filler words. And this is pretty amazing. We can also edit the podcast by simply editing the text.

So you delete the text, that segment of the podcast disappears automatically. So no true editing skills are even needed. You may not even have to use things like garage band or audacity. You just simply edit the text. I've also created an AI synthesized version of my own voice.

So if I want to edit something.

And change the verbiage completely. I can delete that. I can type in words and my own AI generated voice will boom just like that. Materialize. It's pretty wild. Descript can also help with subtitles and it has a whole bunch of other nifty features. One that's kind of fun is it will center your pupils on the camera so if you're looking off screen uh, to read something and videotaping yourself you always have that little glance off to the side.

Descript will fix that and it will put your pupils centered. Uh, and it's pretty effective and looks great. Now for a video, we use a mix of Final Cut Pro, which is an Apple product, uh, and Adobe Premiere Pro. Now, when it comes to video, it's important to understand that video is super challenging. It can be challenging.

Uh, it's more challenging than audio. It takes a whole lot longer to create something reasonable. and again, if you want something that's a decent

quality that comes with a time cost, the time sink, but you know, not everything is a massive project. Small, quick clips are often all you need to enhance your message or get your point across.

And if you want to jump into video production or editing now, I would probably recommend the Adobe suite as they have a whole, you know, slew of different apps, things like illustration, uh, products and animation, things, et cetera, that are all part of the Adobe ecosystem. That seems to be rapidly growing.

So if you want to jump in Adobe, it's probably your way to go. And you can pay for a subscription that gets you access a monthly subscription to all those different apps. So another really utilitarian piece of software that I really encourage everyone listening to check out is Canva. And I think most people probably heard about this by now, but it really is It's absolutely incredible, and they seem to be adding features every day.

We use it to generate infographics and flyers and develop videos for social

media, and the best part about it is the professional output. It looks really fantastic, but it's also super easy to use. Very user friendly. They have tons of helpful tutorials, and again, just this massive slew of features, which makes it a lot of fun to work with.

So those are just a few things that we use to create content at BTK. And so for those of you without an interest in this kind of stuff, or if you have no spare time whatsoever, you can always find an independent contractor on websites like Upwork or Fiverr. Uh, they're there to create content for you.

You simply put in a request and the creators will reach out to you if they're interested. So maybe a high quality infographic will really enhance your next grant proposal. Why not leverage the creator economy to get that done? Using these services is also a great way to improve your own skills. For example, we have used professionals to create advanced video animation templates that we

then kind of work from in the future and learn from.

And eventually we get to be able to do it, you know, ourselves. So that really wraps it up. A quick look behind the scenes at what we're doing at Behind the Knife and our thoughts on this issue. Creator economy and this democratization of technology. We'd love to see more people make surgical education content that they think is important and impactful.

So if you ever have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us at hello at behind the knife. org. Now go out there and dominate the day.