Thread by @Poietic_Justice

No one asked, but here’s a short 🧵about how I like to stay on top of “the literature” as an IM resident without getting overwhelmed. Geared mostly at rising interns -#MedTwitter #MedEd

The biggest challenge for a millennial like me is get all the abstracts into a format that’s at least almost as convenient and attention-grabbing as Reddit. The solution is an RSS feed reader app

There are many options and most are free. I spent a good amount of time using Feedly but have since switched to InoReader (inoreader.com) because I like the simplicity of the layout and features. Use whatever you like

Next you need to figure out what journals to follow. Fewer = better. For a new intern, I rec ~3:
- One of the big 3 (JAMA, NEJM, Lancet)
- One from subspecialty area of interest (for me that’s @BloodJournal )
- One critical care (LRM, CCM, ATS blue journal)

*Sidenote: why do I think all IM residents should follow a crit care journal?

Because we spend the bulk of our time inpatient, and CCM lit informs big decisions we make in acute situations. How much fluid? What abx? Is this POCUS exam helpful? etc.

*I also think the CCM lit generally does the best job of demonstrating good clinical trial practices (e.g. using hard clinical endpoints), and adopting modern methodology early (e.g. Bayesian analysis).

Then it’s time to make an RSS feed using pubmed:

Now how to actually go about reading papers? Mostly don’t. Read the titles/abstracts, and if anything in particular catches your eye as interesting or important, read the paper. Otherwise I skip. Abstracts exist for a reason!

As you get more into a routine, you can add journals and split them into separate topic-focused feeds:

My general feed: JAMA, NEJM, JAMA IM
My heme/onc feed: Blood Journal, JCO, JAMA Onc
My CCM feed: LRM, CCM, Blue Journal

If this all seems too complicated, an alternative strategy is to just make friends with someone like @danleisman (who legit thought about putting "reading JAMA" into the hobbies section of his residency application) and having them update you periodically