In the world of medical education and Twitter, Dr. Oliver Flower (@OliFlower) is a virtual celebrity. Oli has been a central figure in FOAM and serves the daunting role of being a co-organiser for the upcoming buzz-worthy SMACC conference in Chicago (June 23-26, 2015) alongside Roger Harris and Chris Nickson. He is incredibly efficient and effective, juggling multiple deadlines and responsibilities. It was no surprise to us when Oli was tagged by Dr. Rob Mac Sweeney from a previous How I Work Smarter post as someone whom we could learn a lot from. Oli was kind enough to send along his responses.

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In her original post for the “How I Work Smarter” series, Editor-in-Chief Michelle Lin (@M_Lin) called out Dr. Esther Choo (@choo_ek), who then called out Dr. Lainie Yarris (@lainieyarris) from OHSU… and in an unexpected turn of events, Lainie then somehow decided to tag me. How odd… Lainie is a mentor of one of my friends, and she’s been kinda a hero to me, so I find that this is both flattering and somewhat flabbergasting… There is no way I fit within the ranks of those others’ whom have been tagged in this wonderful game of academic “you’re it…”, but as the great Barney Stinson once said: “Challenge accepted.”

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I have known thought-leader and star speaker Dr. Rob Rogers from the University of Maryland for many years now as we have often crossed paths on the national lecture circuits. He has launched many successful innovative educational endeavors such as the EM:RAP Educators Edition podcast series (way before podcasts were cool). Now Rob is leading the charge as the Course Director for The Teaching Course, a premiere conference to mentor today’s and tomorrow’s leaders in medical education. Nominated for this Working Smarter series by Ken Milne, Rob has kindly sent in his secrets to world domination.

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I have known Dr. Scott Weingart for several years now and have watched with amazement about how quickly he established his academic reputation in critical care through the little podcast that could, EMCrit, in 2009 into a worldwide standard. His mantra is: “Bringing upstairs care, downstairs one podcast at a time.” Scott also has blanketed the lecture circuit, and I look forward to catching up with him when he comes to speak at our upcoming UCSF High Risk Emergency Medicine Hawaii (#HREM15). In response to Dr. Rob Mac Sweeney’s nomination for this series, Scott was kind enough to share some of his insights.

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In a previous How I Work Smarter post by Dr. Ken Milne, he called out Dr. Ryan Radecki, who is the outspoken and prolific author of EM Literature of Note and a premiere mythbuster in EM, specifically around thrombolytics in stroke. For those of us in the blogging world, not everyone knows that he lives a dual academic life working on medical informatics and information design. He is, in fact, funded through an NIH grant from the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality for a training program in patient safety. Ryan shares his tips for working smarter.

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I first came to know of Dr. Lauren Westafer (@LWestafer) when she started the amazing The Short Coat blog as a medical student. I feel like such a slacker during medical school… She has quickly risen to the esteemed ranks of online medical education because of both the blog and her podcast, FOAMCast, with Dr. Jeremy Faust. Lauren has kindly agreed to share her tips for working more efficiently.

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In this new installment in the “How I Work Smarter” series, we are featuring Dr. Mike Mallin (@UltrasoundPod), who is half of ultrasound education royalty with Dr. Matt Dawson, who was featured last week in this series. Mike’s work is impressive and I often cite and quote his 2014 publication in Academic Medicine entitled “A survey of the current utilization of asynchronous education among emergency medicine residents in the United States” [Pubmed]. Genius idea for a paper, which no one has done before. Mike was kind enough to share his sage words of wisdom. Did you know he has sub-macros for his macros? #MindBlown  (more…)