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NEJM Resident 360: New Resource to Help Every Resident Thrive

Unique “Rotation Prep” + community = antidote to anxiety

August 31, 2017

Residency is daunting. But NEJM Group has created a resource, specifically for residents, to make it less so. Offering information and community,  NEJM Resident 360 aims to help trainees thrive professionally and personally through the challenges of residency.  It also includes resources for medical students.

“The goal of NEJM Resident 360 is to build both knowledge and confidence so that residents feel more equipped to learn on the job,” says Karen Buckley, product manager for NEJM Resident 360. After listening to what residents and residency directors want and need, NEJM Group launched Resident 360 in June 2016.

“For years, younger clinicians told us they wanted to see all that we have available in one place — all the resources and tools that are most useful to them, across all NEJM Group products,” says Buckley. “For 200 years, NEJM has provided important information to physicians and researchers. Now we’re doing it for residents in a different way.”

NEJM Resident 360 offers authoritative NEJM content that is thoughtfully curated, unique articles and tips focused on professional and personal development, and a discussion platform that brings residents together. This all-in-one-place resource is designed to help trainees through the challenges of residency, while minimizing the anxiety.

“You have to learn things on the job — and you should! — and figure out what material in the literature is applicable to what you do on a daily basis. But where do you even begin?” says Ramya Ramaswami, MBBS, MRCP, MPH, a 2016-17 NEJM editorial fellow who recently completed training as a medical oncologist. “Often it’s hard to know what is high yield and important as there are so many journals and variation in the quality of content out there online.”

The core offering of NEJM Resident 360 is Rotation Prep, which prepares residents for the common rotations and specialties in internal medicine. Each Rotation Prep module (numbering 18 and growing) includes a brief overview, links to landmark clinical trials and review articles from NEJM and other sources, current clinical guidelines, and relevant NEJM videos, case studies, and sample questions from NEJM Knowledge+.

Other areas of NEJM Resident 360 include:

  • Learning Lab, with animated videos, blog posts, and other NEJM features to hone diagnostic skills and put research into context.
  • Resident Lounge articles and blog posts with practical advice for residency, inspiring stories, active discussion groups, and other opportunities to connect with other residents.
  • Student Corner resources and guidance specifically for medical students.

Full access to NEJM Resident360 — which includes Rotation Prep and the ability to participate in discussions — is a benefit of all individual subscriptions and institutional site licenses. Residents and students at subscribing institutions can create an account while on the campus of the subscribing institution. Once they confirm their email address, their account will be associated with the institutional subscription and they can sign in from anywhere, on any device. Individual subscribers can create an account using the same email associated with their subscription for seamless access. To date, more than 51,000 users have joined.

Rotation Prep: A Key Resource from Day 1

The first stop is generally Rotation Prep.

“Residents often feel unprepared to begin a new rotation. Reading landmark papers in a given field can help residents understand important background about a specialty — especially in critical care and cardiology, where large randomized controlled trials have led to dramatic shifts in guidelines and patient care,” says Rebecca E Berger, MD, an NEJM editorial fellow from 2016-17, during the year after her own residency. She created the Rotation Prep module on Women’s Health and updated several of the guides, including Critical Care, Gastroenterology, and Neurology.

“With a few minutes on the site, an intern can feel prepared to care for his or her first patient with septic shock, or an upper-level resident can brush-up before supervising and teaching that intern,” she says.

Much of the Rotation Prep content is written and curated by residents and fellows with the guidance of experts and residency directors. Input from current and recent residents is a key component of the site.

“I wish that I had this resource as a medical resident, but also as a medical student, to understand the evidence about important topics,” says Ramaswami. “Resident 360 allows you to find everything you need in one place. And you develop your own network in the process.”

Building Community, For Guidance and Support

“The most ingenious part of NEJM Resident 360,” says Ramaswami, “is that it aims to create a community of physicians-in-training not only in the United States but beyond.”

Community-building tools and resources that contribute information as well as camaraderie include:

  • “A Day in the Life” podcasts of attending physicians who describe training and daily life in their subspecialties. These expose residents to real-life perspectives that they may be uncomfortable seeking out in their own institutions.
  • Discussions forums, including the popular “Prepping for PGY-1” (60,000 views), “Surviving Your First Month as a Doctor,” (39,000 views), and “Maintaining Balance in Residency” (35,000 views).
  • Journal clubs, which residency directors or chiefs can sponsor in conjunction with NEJM Resident 360, as Emory University recently did.

Altogether, these resources provide an antidote to the anxiety of residency. They offer opportunity to make the resident voice heard — including shaping the evolution of NEJM Resident360.

“We are very open to suggestions on how to improve the website, which I think is unique considering a lot of the other platforms feel very closed off,” says Ramaswami. Resident input has helped determine additions to Rotation Prep, for example, and the site welcomes topic ideas for online discussions.

“It’s a great resource for residents that goes beyond medical facts and information,” says Michelle A. Kraft, MLS, AHIP, director of Library Services for the Cleveland Clinic Floyd D. Loop Alumni Library. “There aren’t a lot of quality resources out there that help residents deal with the ‘other‘ stuff that they need to learn and do as a resident. As a medical librarian, I am always looking for good resources that address an area of need. This is one of them that I can recommend to my residents.”

Telling Residents: Don’t Forget the Librarians!

Kraft’s enthusiasm for NEJM Resident 360 led her to contribute the blog post “How to Take Advantage of Your Medical Librarian.” She urges residents to tap into librarians’ tools and expertise — for clinical care resources, finding source material for writing grants and IRB proposals, choosing the right journal for a submission, and tips for using citation software.

“Most librarians are happy to consult by email, text, or phone,” she writes to residents. “Think of it in the same way you might contact a specialist consultant or a research mentor.”

Kraft has placed links on Cleveland Clinic’s resident resource pages to the relevant NEJM Resident 360 Rotation Prep modules. “So many [residents] know only about PubMed and UpToDate,” she says.
“We want them to know that there are other resources that may have more of the information that they are looking for.”

Pointing residency directors to NEJM Resident 360 is also a good way for librarians to engage education leaders on what the library can offer. “Get out of the library. Go to [residency directors],” says Kraft. “Ask if you can sit in on one of their meetings or round with them so that you can see what they need. Ask them what they wish the residents could have or use.”

In turn, librarians can direct residents to supportive peers and expertise on NEJM Resident 360, where they can develop their own voice and leadership by joining discussion groups and writing blog posts for the site.

“NEJM Resident 360 also offers residents an opportunity to share their experiences and opportunities to publish,” says Buckley. “We want to involve people. We are saying, ‘Come be part of what we’re doing.’”

NEJM Resident360 welcomes your ideas:  What other features and information might be helpful to residents and medical students? Send us your thoughts to nejmlibraryhub@nejm.org

For institutional access to NEJM Resident360, contact institutionsales@nejm.org. 

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