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Dear ALiEM Supporters:

Happy Holidays from the ALiEM team! During this time of year, it is always good to take stock of your life.  At Academic Life in Emergency Medicine (ALiEM), we decided to reflect of the life of the blog by generating our Year in Review 2013. First, thank you to each of you. Your time, comments, tweets, and feedback are what make this blog successful and dynamic as an educational resource.We appreciate your continued readership and engagement.

Many exciting things have transpired over the past 12 months. We wish to review some of the highlights, as well as give a sneak peek into 2014.

You may download a PDF summary of our Annual Report by clicking here or on the picture below.

ALiEM Year in Review: Statistics and reach in 2013

ALiEM Annual Report 2013

The following are the statistical report from our Google Analytics since migrating to the new WordPress platform in June 2013. Counting statistics from both Blogger and WordPress, we received a total of 847,642 page views for Jan-Dec 2013.

  • Blogger (Jan 1-May 31, 2013): 302,719 pageviews from 105,170 unique visitors
  • WordPress (Jun 13-Dec 13, 2013): 549,741 pageviews from 172,343 unique visitors

During our time on WordPress (Jun-Dec 2013), we reached 10,640 cities in 195 countries (See Figure 1).

Figure 1: Dot plot showing cities where ALiEM has been accessed during Jun-Dec 2013. The larger the dot, the more people accessing the blog in that area.

Figure 1: Dot plot showing cities where ALiEM has been accessed during Jun-Dec 2013. The larger the dot, the more people accessing the blog in that area.

Highlights of 2013

2013 has been a big year for the ALiEM team.  We’ve had a number of improvements of which we are proud.

Moving from Blogger to WordPress

We moved from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress platform. This allowed customization of the site and its increasingly sophisticated features. Thank you, Designer-in-Chief Sue Kim.

Expert Peer Review

This is the new revolution in peer review and blogs! Click here for the full introduction. We are also thrilled to announce that the Medical Education Innovations paper on this initiative has recently been accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine. Stay tuned for more information.

ALiEM Resident Editor & New Editorial Board

We began the fall with the goal of mentoring those interested in behind-the-scenes operations of  medical education in social media. Dr. Natalie Desouza (@N_Desouza) was added as first Resident Editor. Read more here.

In further evaluation, we realized that some key contributors function in an editorial capacity for ALiEM. And (just in time for this Annual Review), we are proud to announce the new members of our Editorial Board:

Teresa Chan MD FRCPC – Associate Editor (MEdIC Series, ALiEM Book Club)

Bryan Hayes PharmD – Associate Editor (ALiEM Pharm Series)

Nikita Joshi MD – Associate Editor (ALiEM Book Club, ALiEM Sim Case Series)

Salim Rezaie, MD – Associate Editor (ALiEM Cardiology Series)

Brent Thoma MD MA – Associate Editor (MEdIC Series, Sim Case Series)

Increased Engagement Strategy

2013 marked the year we significantly upped the ante with our online engagement strategies. The following are several ALiEM initiatives which demonstrate the engagement and involvement amazing emergency medicine community.

  • ALiEM Book Club: Led by Dr. Nikita Joshi (@NJoshi8) and Dr. Teresa Chan (@TChanMD), held monthly on the second Friday of the month with the goal of sharing books that can deepen our clinical practice. Follow the discussion with @ALiEMBook and #ALiEMBook.
  • @ALiEMConf: This Twitter account was created to keep you connected with exciting conferences around the globe.
  • AnnalsEM-ALiEM Global Journal Club: We are formally collaborating with the premiere EM journal and ALiEM with the first pilot project being the joint global journal club. Our goal is to transform medical education through improved scholarly participation.
  • MEdIC Series: Led by Dr. Teresa Chan (@TChanMD) and Dr. Brent Thoma (@Brent_Thoma), this educational section puts forth challenging dilemmas in medical education cases and sets the dialogue for discussion, professional development, and resolution.
  • Residency Twitter Map (#EMConf): Dr. Nikita Joshi and Dr. Salim Rezaie (@SRRezaie) put together a fantastic resource in this map that shows all residency programs nationally and internationally that tweet and contribute to medical education.

We are also proud to help kickstart a new #FOAMed initiative!

New and Improved Resources

We have a continued mandate to actively improve the quality and quantity of our digital scholarship for your engagement. This year we have diversified our content by incorporating new enduring products and resources.

  • ALiEM Sim Case Series: This series was relaunched in December 2013 to provide a design-centered PDF. This PDF provides a comprehensive guide for students, residents, and educators to learn, teach, and evaluate important EM milestones.
  • iClickEM: ALiEM became the first blog to incorporate the customized search bar for this intuitive, smart search engine which targets medical content.
  • PV cards on AgileMD app: Dr. Michelle Lin’s (@M_Lin) well-known 100+ Paucis Verbis cards are now even easier to access and use. [iOSAndroid]

Coming Soon in 2014

Here is a taste test of what we have in store…

Strengthening our collaboration with Annals of EM

  • Social Media forum for Resident Perspective Section
  • Input into which Annals of EM articles become open access

SimLIFE-EM video simulation series

Led by Drs. Nikita Joshi, Henry Curtis, and Michelle Lin this staged, in-situ simulation series will surely take the Social Media world by storm.

Thank-you to the team at ALiEM.

ALiEM Featured ContributorsALiEM Guest Contributors
Kristen Beckler, CTRS, CCLSMatt Astin, MD
Javier Benítez, MDNadia Awad, PharmD
Teresa Chan, BEd MD FRCPCSteven Bin, MD
Zlatan Coralic, PharmDJohn Brown, MD
Natalie Desouza, MDRob Bryant, MD
Jeremy Faust, MD MSKristin Fontes, MD
Bryan Hayes, PharmD, DABATAndy Grock, MD
Nikita Joshi, MDEmily Heil, MD
Rahul Patwari, MDDelphine Huang, MD
Megan Ranney, MD MPHCindy Hsu, MD PhD
Salim Rezaie, MDJosh Joseph, MD
Todd Seigel, MDEmily Junck, MD
Christina Shenvi, MD PhDSean Kivlehan, MD MPH
Brent Thoma, MD MATerrance Lee, MD
Suzanne Lippert, MS MD
Arun Nagdev, MD
Kene Nwoye, MD
Timothy Peck, MD
Steven Polevoi, MD
Dan Repplinger, MD
Hans Rosenberg, MD
Eric Silman, MD
Noah Sugerman, MD
Demian Szyld, MD EdM
Mac Walter, MD
Jeff Wiswell, MD
Fred Wu, MHS, PA-C
Stella Yiu, MD
ALiEMblogteam_IEMTC13-sm2

Salim Rezaie, Nikita Joshi, Bryan Hayes, Michelle Lin
International Emergency Medicine Teaching Course
Baltimore, MD

Natalie Desouza, MD

Natalie Desouza, MD

ALiEM Resident Editor
Emergency Medicine PGY-4 Resident
University of California San Francisco
San Francisco General Hospital