I moved up to Portland from Southern California about four years ago and I must say that living in Oregon has been quite an adventure. A while back a patient of mine described Portland weather thusly, “You know Portland has two seasons, the rainy season and construction season.”
When it comes to my yard it seems like there are also two seasons. Unless it is too cold to go into my yard it seems like I am either pulling weeds or picking up leaves. When it comes to mundane tasks like weed pulling I entertain myself listening to a variety of podcasts that for the most part have something to do with sports.
However, I recently came across a really nice diabetes podcast. Before I tell you about this podcast I will share my opinion that a true podcast has to have the capability of being played on an iPod of some other portable mp3 player. There are too many audio programs on the internet that identify themselves as podcasts when they are in fact, nothing more than audio files that can be played over the internet. I suppose that I could take my android phone out into the yard, search for a website and listen to an “internet podcast.” However, I like the idea of being able to listen to a podcast on the go without having to use up the data plan and the battery on my cell phone while I listen!
OK, I am now stepping down from my mini-soapbox about podcasting to tell you about this relatively new, cool podcast that will allow you to stay up-to-speed on the latest diabetes research without even having to open a journal. This new postcast comes from the American Diabetes Association and is called “Diabetes Core Update.” In a nutshell this podcast is a monthly review of interesting articles from four science and medical journals from the ADA: Diabetes, Diabetes Care, Clinical Diabetes and Diabetes Spectrum.
The hosts of the podcast are Neil Skolnik & John Russell, two family practice docs from the Temple University School of Medicine.
http://www.amh.org/education/resident-training-programs/family-medicine/faculty/
Although they don’t take listener calls, Drs Skolnik and Russell are kind of like the “Click & Clack” of diabetes journal article reviewers. They don’t joke around excessively, but they do provide an overview of about 4-5 interesting articles and then discuss how the research relates to their practice of medicine. Since I work with a bunch of really smart endocrinologists I suppose it would be easy for me to look down on these two guys because they are “just family practice docs”, but these two guys seem to measure up pretty well. At least I can understand their reviews, unlike some of the journal clubs and grand rounds lectures I have attended in my lifetime.
So if you need some company out in the yard this fall as you begin to deal with all of the falling leaves, give the Diabetes Core Update podcast a listen. You’ll be glad you did!
http://www.diabetesjournals.org/site/podcasts/podcasts.xhtml