Author: Ross Donaldson

Dr. Ross Donaldson, creator of WikEM Interviewed on Osmosis

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Osmosis.org has a new interview with the Creator and Editor-in-Chief of WikEM, as part their Leaders in Medical Education series.  Read some of the history behind how WikEM started.

“If anything should be free and open in this world, then certainly the knowledge to care for your fellow human during an emergency has to be on the top of that list.”  -Ross Donaldson, MD, MPH

Over the last six years, we have gone from having just a few people accessing the site per day to tens of thousands of sessions per month with over 100,000 downloads of the app to date.  WikEM is now the most popular emergency medicine-specific application in the world and is open to all medical providers (including medical students) across the globe to help edit, as a key open access resource.  We can now take that life-saving… Read more

IRS recognizes WikEM organization as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity

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We’re pleased to announce that after a thorough review of our finances, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has recently recognized the OpenEM Foundation, the overarching organization supporting WikEM, as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit public charity.

Please donate now and help make open access to medical knowledge possible for all!

If there are any universals in this world, then chief among them is an innate human desire to care for our fellow beings when in suffering and extremis. Our goal is to make sure the knowledge to perform that important task is freely available to all. Thank you for your generous support.

—The WikEM Team
… Read more

The Wiki: A Key Social Media Tool

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Correspondence in Annals of Emergency Medicine about WikEM’s important place in social media: http://authors.elsevier.com/a/1QkDm_4TJw~Pq0

Blogs, podcasts, videocasts, social networks, and custom search engines are all important resources for stimulating research discussion and improving medical education. However, as acknowledged by Thoma et al, “to make effective use of this stream of knowledge, learners must filter and choose from myriad resources.”2 We suggest that the wiki is a key social media tool to organize and summarize this growing body of online information. It also has the added benefit of providing easy access to consensus information in the middle of a shift, allowing clinicians to provide better care while at the bedside.

–doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2014.12.017… Read more

Get credit for resident reading electives and asynchronous learning activities, while supporting open access medicine!

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Are you a resident who would like to get credit for time spent editing WikEM or a faculty member looking for a free and easy way to document reading elective and/or asynchronous learning activities?  Support open access medicine!  Use the WikEM elective and asynchronous learning platform, supported by the non-profit OpenEM Foundation.
Contributions to WikEM benefit medical practitioners around the globe, while being immediately available to the contributor, their fellow residents, and their residency program via the WikEM website and its native mobile applications.
Many EM residency programs offer reading electives and/or asynchronous learning  (i.e. “individualized interactive instruction”). However, these activities can be difficult to monitor, leading to numerous problems
… Read more

Top 10 Reasons to Share your Knowledge by Editing WikEM

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WikEM isn’t just the premier emergency medicine bedside reference, it’s also a wiki, meaning that our users collaborate to provide our content.  Have you really not made an edit yet?  Here are some reasons you should:

  1. It’s fun!
  2. It’s educational.
  3. It will make you a better clinician.
  4. It’s social.  Interact with the new cohort of intelligent #FOAMed clinicians, who are making medical education free and openly available on the web.
  5. You are helping providers around the world have access to free and current medical information. (Why donate outdated textbooks when you can put content online for free download?)
  6. It gives you something to do on those late night shifts, instead of making inflatable turkey’s with disposable gloves (which are pediatric choking
… Read more

Thanks to our 2014 donors!

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As we near the end of our first year as a formal entity, OpenEM Foundation, the overarching nonprofit entity supporting WikEM, would like to thank its generous 2014 donors for their support.

All proceeds are used for hosting costs, website support, and mobile development.  Help make WikEM better!  Please consider joining them and donate at: http://www.wikem.org/wiki/Donate.

2014 Donors

  • Barbara Ryan (Seattle, WA)
  • Elaine Beever (British Columbia)
  • Evan Suzuki (Philadelphia, PA)
  • Gaurav Tyagi (Hoboken, NJ)
  • George Verghese (Solihull, West Midlands)
  • Ilker Akba (Kahramanmaras, Turkey)
  • John Hipskind (Visalia, CA)
  • John Thompson (Walnut, CA)
  • Jung Kim (East Setauket, NY)
  • Karl Bandyan (Van Nuys, CA)
  • Maxim Ben Yakov (Toronto, Ontario)
  • Nicholas Abraham (Los Angeles, CA)
  • Rebecca Thilo (Long Beach,
… Read more