Becoming a Digital Contributor: A Reflection on the Expanding WikiProject Medicine Course

By: Christine Greipp, MLIS, fourth-year medical student, University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine The Expanding WikiProject Medicine course at UCSF, described in a recent Academic Medicine article, intrigued me for a number of reasons. With a master of library science, I had been a medical librarian before a medical student. My prior work was in consumer health and patient education within a tertiary hospital. I firmly believe that medicine is at its best a partnership between physicians and patients. So I naturally jumped at the chance to participate in this project, which has the admirable and ambitious goal of providing free, high-quality health information to the world’s population in their language. The course description starts with the provocative question, “Admit it – you use Wikipedia extensively. Who doesn’t?” As medical students, most of us are likely savvy consumers of information. We might use Wikipedia as a quick memory jog when we encounter a disease we once knew that now eludes us, before delving into more conventional sources. But Wikipedia may be a patient’s only source of medical information. Our patients may not know about other sources of health information. For patients in the developing world, who may have limited access to libraries, Wikipedia may be the primary way they access information, via mobile networks (provided without data charges by some wireless carriers). For these reasons, ensuring the quality of Wikipedia me...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Trainee Perspective humanities in medicine medical education medical students research Source Type: blogs