"Education would be so much more effective if its purpose were to ensure that by the time they leave school every boy and girl should know how much they don't know, and be imbued with a lifelong desire to know it."



Medicine requires a constant interest in keeping up to date with new methods, research and technology, so students need to develop skills in reflecting on what they need to learn and where to look for information.

Before beginning, you might want to read:

1. What is Critical Appraisal? - Critical appraisal is the process of carefully and systematically examining research to judge its trustworthiness, and its value and relevance in a particular context.
   
2. What is Evidence Based Medicine Evidence-based medicine is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients.
3. Evidence Based Medicine: what it is and what it isn't- an editorial from the British Medical Journal
4. Using Wikis and Peer Evaluation to Teach Medical Students How to Find and Assess Evidence Based Resources: A Pilot Study .

If you only have time to check one website, then check out PeRSSonalized Medicine, one of the most brilliant attempts at medical aggregating I've seen to date.

Here are some resources that will help with that process

Librarian Recommendations

The National Library for Health's Clinical Knowledge Summaries are a reliable source of evidence-based information and practical ‘know how’ about the common conditions managed in primary and first-contact care.

Emedicine from WebMD has 65,000 articles searchable by specialty and topic.


The Journal of the International Association of Medical Science Educators (JIAMSE) is the redesigned, peer-reviewed publication of the International Association of Medical Science Educators and represents a natural evolution from the former Basic Science Educator.

MEDLINE is the National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences.

MedlinePlus will direct you to information to help answer patient's health questions. MedlinePlus brings together authoritative information from NLM, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and other government agencies and health-related organizations.

PubMed, available via the NCBI Entrez retrieval system, was developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH).


UpToDate, which is available through the Web, desktop, and PDA, combines the best evidence with the experience of expert physicians around the world. Preferred in a study of Australian doctors.

Medical Education Resources

Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) developed and launched MedEdPORTAL as a free publishing venue and dissemination portal to support educators and learners as they create and use on-line teaching materials, assessment tools and faculty development resources.

British Medical Journal Learning offers a variety of learning modules including one on Confidentiality and another on Consent.

Epocretes Online organizes practical, peer-reviewed content with a unique patient-centered approach, providing you with answers, not more questions. Famous for drug information on your PDA.

The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) is a digital library that provides freely accessible digital teaching resources of the highest quality that meet the needs of today's health sciences educators and learners.

Human Embryology Animations The animations on this site from the Indiana University were developed so students could better understand the complex processes that must occur in embryologic development.

Journal of Medical Internet Research sponsor of the yearly Medicine 2.0 conference in Toronto.

*** The goal of The Medpedia Project is to collaboratively build the living encyclopedia of health, medicine, and the body, only MD's and PhD's are allowed to edit the entries.

MedTing where you can customize cases and resources for use by your university.

PocketSnips from Northern Ontario School of Medicine provides high-quality educational materials that will benefit a variety of learners and be accessible to Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs). Specifically targeted are the learning needs of medical students and residents, nursing students, and other allied health professionals.

Podmedics.com is a new website, and podcast developer, run by a group of junior doctors and medical students. All our podcasts are aimed specifically at medical students, and outline key principles and concepts.

Interactive Clinical Pharmacology has been designed to increase understanding of important and sometimes difficult concepts and principles in Clinical Pharmacology. It is not intended to be comprehensive for all aspects of Clinical Pharmacology teaching.

University of Maryland Medical Centre videos on numerous medical topics from robotic laparoscopy to patient success stories.

Other Sources

*** recommended, other sites may not be familiar to me. Please write a review in the discussion area.

AskDrWiki.com originally from the Cleveland Clinic, where you can publish your review articles, clinical notes, pearls, and medical images on the site. Using a wiki anyone with a medical background can contribute or edit medical articles.

The Australian e-Health Research Centre, a joint venture between CSIRO and the Queensland Government, is a leading national research facility in ICT for healthcare innovations.

***British Medical Journal Learning offers several options for self study including regularly emailed articles. You do need a subscription to the magazine.

Cases Journal is a rapidly peer-reviewed, open access journal publishing case reports from any area of healthcare

*** Clinical Cases and Images, another website from the Cleveland Clinic, this site has cases and procedure guides.

The Creative MD is a showcase of artwork by medical students, physicians and surgeons around the world because its not just about facts.

***DiagnosisPro - Covering over 15,000 disease manifestations such as symptoms, labs, ECG, X-ray, CT-Scan, MRI, Ultrasound, pathology, microbiology results and more.

The Doctor’s Channel is a Web site that allows doctors to learn from each other at their convenience. The time-saving site includes short one- to two-minute streaming video clips designed to get to the point, with insights and opinions from experts in 35 different specialties, as well as community and lifestyle features that help doctors stay on top of the latest news, ideas and information.

The eHealth International Journal provides a peer-reviewed vehicle for timely publication of scientific research on the application of information technology in medicine, medical care delivery, and public health.

EKG/ECG Reading and Interpretation is an educational web site by Dr. Dale Dubin (Dale Dubin, M.D.), which includes important EKG (ECG) information about EKG tracings, 12 lead EKG's, and cardiac monitors.

eMedTV offers over 100 health channels, each serving as a portal to an extensive library of medical information. Our articles explore subjects ranging from symptoms and diseases to tests and procedures to drugs and supplements. Each topic contains a series of articles carefully designed to answer your questions and provide detailed health information. Links to related articles are found on each page, streamlining your search for the exact medical information you need.

e-meducation Teaching Cases from the AIBS institute in Greece

Free Medical Lectures -videos

Global RPH is a guide to drug therapy for clinicians.

Every 24 hours, MDLinx scans 1200 leading journals across 30 medical specialties and professions and summarizes and filters the articles so you'll see just what is important in your areas of interest.

MedTing where you can customize cases and resources for use by your university.

The Medi-Vision™ Film Series aims to teach good clinical practice through expert case demonstrations on film; second to patient-side experience, we think this is the best way to become a better doctor. We keep the focus of our DVDs on observation, interaction and assessment skills and especially on history-taking, physical signs and the appropriate use of tests. They have some excellent examination DVDs for sale.

POM1 from the University of Virginia has links to instructional modules and videos demonstrating physical exam techniques.

*** The Rx for Change database summarizes current research evidence about the effects of strategies to improve drug prescribing practice and drug use. This database houses summaries of key findings from systematic reviews that evaluate the effects of strategies targeting professionals, the organization of health care, and consumers.

*** Top Medical Podcasts: Medicine and Health Audio and Videos - multi-discipline, multi site list.

*** TripAnswers is a collection of interactive clinical Q&As from around the World. Check out his tagcloud of Clinical Uncertainty. Answers is part of the larger Trip Database, which allows health professionals to easily find the highest-quality material available on the web - to help support evidence based practice. There are 90,000 images at the site.

QuizMD has 1000 questions thanks to all of its hardworking contributors.

UK Ehealth site

UpToDate, which is available through the Web, desktop, and PDA, combines the best evidence with the experience of expert physicians around the world. Whenever you have a clinical question, you can tap into the collective wisdom and experience of our faculty of more than 4,000 leading clinicians.

VideoMD was created by physicians, for physicians and their patients. Our mission is to strengthen the relationship between doctors and their patients. Using contemporary technology to help physicians fully educate patients on their specific healthcare concerns, the bond between doctor and patient will be changed forever.

Virtual Mentors is the American Medical Association's online ethics journal. The journal is open-access and advertisement-free—we strongly believe that ethics education for physicians and physicians-to-be is in the public's interest and should be made available without charge. Founded in 1999, Virtual Mentor (VM) explores the ethical issues and challenges that students, residents, and other physicians are likely to confront in their training and daily practice. For this reason, the journal is a valuable teaching resource for medical educators at all levels as well as for doctors and doctors-to-be. Each monthly issue of VM contains original articles and commentary on a given theme-e.g., access to care; quality-of-life considerations in clinical decision making, public roles of physicians, ethical issues in endocrinology, conflict of values in the clinic.

WebMed Technology are very proud to introduce these videos as an aid to anyone that may need to refresh their knowledge in these particular areas. Procedural videos include Chest Tube Insertion and Lumbar Punctures.

Wellcome Library Collections of books, manuscripts, archives, films and pictures on the history of medicine from the earliest times to the present day.

wePapers is a free social knowledge sharing web application which allows college & university students and lecturers to share their papers, notes and other materials, ask each-other questions and more. It is in 12 languages and hopes to be the world's largest study group.

Discipline Specific

American Family Physician, the refereed magazine of The American Academy of Family Physicians is one of the largest American medical organizations, representing more than 94,000 family physicians, family medicine residents, and medical students.

Canadian Family Physician (CFP) is a peer reviewed medical journal dedicated to serving Canadian family physicians and advancing the specialty of family medicine worldwide.

Family Medicine Digital Resource Library contains user-posted conference presentations and handouts, and shared curricular materials such as PowerPoint lectures, learning modules, syllabi, digital images, video and audio recordings, recommended Web sites and more.

Talking With Your Older Patient: A Clinician’s Handbook Learning effective communication techniques—and using them—may help you build more satisfying relationships with older patients and become even more skilled at managing their care.


DermAtlas 11, 000 images

Dermatology Atlas Loyola University Dermatology Medical Education Website

Dermis images


Beautiful Cervix source for images of the cervix throughout the monthly cycle.

Clinical Guidelines for Obstetrical Providers from the Harvard Medical insurance providers.

Global Library of Women's Health A major not-for-profit initiative to provide medical professionals worldwide with free and universal access to a vast and constantly updated, peer-reviewed resource of clinical information and guidance. Most of the chapters listed in the main contents on this site were originally published in the 6-volume textbook, Obstetrics and Gynecology, edited by Professor John Sciarra in 2004.

Mnemonics in Obstetrics & Gynaecology Primarily for MRCOG exam.


Pathology Library This popular web resource includes over 1900 images along with text, tutorials, laboratory exercises, and examination items for self-assessment that demonstrate gross and microscopic pathological findings associated with human disease conditions.


PediatricEducation.org is a Pediatric Digital Library and Learning Collaboratory intended to serve as a source of continuing pediatric education. It is edited by two faculty at the University of Iowa.

PedsCases from the University of Alberta is a comprehensive database of pediatric cases and pediatric questions. With the aid of staff pediatricians, this site will serve as a tool to assess your knowledge in multi-step clinical scenarios and various recall questions.


Welcome to Radiopaedia.org, a collaborative radiology resource.

List of radiology resources

Radiology wiki The free medical imaging resource created by the radiology community.


ORLive a large collection of surgery videos and other resources.

SurgyTec describes themselves as your online community for surgical and invasive procedures.

Wikisurgery is collaboratively building the most comprehensive and trusted free surgical encyclopaedia. With over 1,300 articles for surgeons and patients, including news, articles, operation scripts, biographies and images.

Top 50 Surgery Blogs


Wikiecho is a project to create a free, up-to-date and reliable online resource covering the rapidly advancing field of echocardiography .






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