Dr. Chino welcomes Dr. Vivek Patel and Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky to discuss a recent article in JCO OP that reported a podcast-based curriculum could improve knowledge and comfort with common education topics for oncology fellows.

TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Fumiko Chino: Hello, and welcome to Put Into Practice, the podcast for JCO Oncology Practice. I am Dr. Fumiko Chino, an assistant professor in Radiation Oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center with a research focus on access, affordability, and equity.

There are over 450 million podcasts available today, and online audio consumption continues to rise year after year. In the US alone, over 200 million people have listened to online audio in the last month, and health and fitness remains one of the most popular categories. Podcast audiences range from the lay public to patients with cancer to providers, with the dual goal to both entertain and inform. A recent randomized control trial published in JCO OP reported that a podcast-based curriculum could improve knowledge and comfort with common education topics for oncology fellows.

I am happy to welcome two guests today to discuss the role of podcasts to improve information sharing. They are both podcast hosts, making this ASCO’s first podcast about podcasts.

Dr. Vivek Patel, MD, is an assistant professor and APD at Vanderbilt University with a treatment focus on blood cancers. He co-founded the Fellow on Call podcast in 2021 to fill a perceived gap in high quality, free, online medical education content in Hem-Onc. The podcast provides the fundamentals, core concepts, and important management approaches in an easily accessible, asynchronous learning platform. He is the first author of the JCO OP manuscript, “Education Impact of a Podcast Curriculum for Hematology-Oncology Fellows,” which was simultaneously published with his oral presentation at the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting.

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky, MD, FASCO, is the Head of Breast and Gynecological Medical Oncology at Valley Health System and a clinical assistant professor at Mount Sinai. She is the host of the Interlude podcast, founded in 2018 with the goal to promote support, inspiration, knowledge, and hope to listeners via patient and provider interviews. She is also active on social media, providing real time expert commentary on active new stories from emerging research to celebrity diagnosis and treatment.

Our full disclosures are available in the transcript of this episode, and we have already agreed to go by our first names for the episode today.

Vivek and Eleonora, it’s so wonderful to speak to you.

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky: Thanks for having us.

Dr. Vivek Patel: Glad to be here.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: Our specific topic today is podcasts as an avenue for knowledge transfer for both patients and providers. This conversation is loosely based on a manuscript that Vivek and team published on the findings of a randomized control trial of an education intervention.

Vivek, do you mind sharing with us how you got interested in podcasting and then briefly discussing what your study team did and the findings?

Dr. Vivek Patel: Yeah, yeah. So getting interested in podcasting really started when I finished residency and was starting Hem-Onc fellowship. There is a popular podcast, The Curbsiders, and I always listened to it when I was a resident to learn core concepts in internal medicine. When I got to Hem-Onc fellowship, there was a gap. And after my first year of fellowship, I met with a couple of my co-fellows and we just decided, “Hey, let’s just make a podcast. Maybe it will just be for our program.” It ended up being this bigger thing that we created with The Fellow on Call. So that that is really what the start of the journey was, was just, "Hey, there is nothing here. Let us just do something for fun," and then it just kind of took off from there.

For the study that we did though, what we really focused on was, there’s been so many studies out there now that have looked at using podcasts and that people like them, people enjoy them, that they are convenient. But there are very few studies looking at, does podcast actually improve knowledge? And that is a very difficult thing to study. You know, it is really hard to do education research in general, particularly in the multi-center setting.

What we did was we designed a multi-center cluster randomized trial where we included 27 hematology-oncology fellowship programs and we randomized the programs to a supplementary curriculum in addition to the standard didactics with our podcast and another podcast that we work closely with, The Two Onc Docs, versus just standard curriculum alone, with a goal of understanding does fellow comfort level in a select set of topics improve and does their knowledge assessment in those topics improve as well? So we actually created and validated a knowledge test as well. We decided not to use the in-training exams because, you know, we figured, well look, these in-training exams cover a broad range of topics. We are really focused on our very key principles in a few disease areas. And the bottom line results were, it was a positive study. We found that the knowledge test scores improved by 15.5% favoring the podcast arms and fellows at the end of the year felt more comfortable in the disease topics that we had given them. So it was interesting to see that the podcast actually improved both comfort and knowledge in the set of topics that we had chosen.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: I love this type of pragmatic, cluster randomized trial which asks a really discreet but also important question, which is how can we be improving education? And also, I think making it more accessible, right? And that is one thing I think your podcast does amazingly, is that you really go into depth on these topics which are quite complex, and I think is useful not just for trainees, but also even practicing physicians that kind of want to bone up on these topics.

Now, The Fellow on Call podcast is a provider-facing podcast. It really focuses on education for trainees and the practicing provider. Interlude is a patient-facing podcast with a goal of sharing stories and knowledge about cancer survivors and caregivers. Eleonora, I would love your perspective on the role of podcasts in the cancer community and how your podcast differs in focus and framing from an educational podcast for trainees. And also, honestly, just given your role as a program director of a new fellowship program, I would love your thoughts about the findings from the study itself.

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky: I love podcasts, first of all. I think they are amazing for learning, especially asynchronous learning, and we know everyone learns in different ways, right? So having more opportunities is so important. But I think it is really important to do studies like this and to highlight that yes, in fact, podcasts do help. And I do think it should be part of at least the offerings of how do we provide information and materials to our trainees. And I agree, it is not just trainees, right? Your maybe board preparation, something you can plug in in the car while you are driving. I think so many uses.

From my side, I think that podcasts also have a really good role on the patient-facing side. And so I will very briefly, I started actually first just educating on social media. This was right around the time where misinformation was starting to become rampant, and patients were coming in with questions. And you know, I felt like as I am sure we all do that 15 minutes is not enough time to spend with the patient and they were leaving sometimes with more questions than they came in with. And so I started saying, “You know what, let me just put this stuff out there online, no medical advice, but just educating.”

And then I realized, wait a second, I don’t really understand survivorship that well. I do not understand what our patients are truly living with because we were not taught that as trainees. Things have changed a lot, but back then it really was not a focus. And so I realized I just wanted to talk to patients, not my patients, people who I did not have a doctor-patient relationship with, just to hear their stories. And, oh my gosh, you know, the first one I did, I remember I said, “Wow.” There was so much that I did not know about that experience. And so it’s really helped me as well.

But I think putting it out there for patients who do not always feel comfortable asking questions online, going to a support group and speaking up, this allows them to, again, in an asynchronous way, to hear people's experiences and stories. And then over time I started bringing on experts. You know, Fumiko, you were on, and we talked about financial toxicity and radiation. These are questions that patients have, and it allows them to get information from a trusted source. And I will say, I think it really helps people when they have time, when they are not in a high pressure environment. On their own time, they can write things down. They really can process the information, and I think in a less stressful way, empowering themselves to then go to their doctor's appointments and say, “Hey, can we talk about these things? Right? Can we talk about ways to protect my heart during radiation?” All of these questions that maybe they did not even know they should be asking.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: I love that when you said you thought you were going to create this podcast as an education tool for patients, but that you learned so much about it. And I have to say, I have learned a lot from patient's stories and that really large engaged survivorship population. And having some of these conversations has been really invaluable to my ongoing education role. Hopefully all lifelong learners here, both on this call, but also our listeners.

The rise of podcasts aligns with how communication and education has changed in the modern era from in-person didactics to conversations on Zoom, social media, TikTok. Some of this has coincided with the 2020 podcasting boom during the pandemic lockdown, and some of it is really driven by younger patients and younger providers. They seem to learn better with the rise of alternative media formats that can better engage Gen Y, Gen Z. So for example, over half of the fellows on this trial already used podcasts as part of their baseline educational resources and only a quarter used textbooks.

Vivek, I would appreciate your take as a junior faculty member on how your education may have changed over the course of your training and how this continues to evolve based on what you have seen in the next generation of medical trainees.

Dr. Vivek Patel: When I was a medical student, a lot of the resources I used were textbooks, some of the traditional resources, and as I advanced on to training and went into residency, it became challenging to keep on reading textbooks and going through all of that. Podcasts are a convenient way to get that information, and I think as the younger generations are coming up, they are really interested in these short form videos and things like that. So it is really convenient.

The other nice thing about these podcasts, most medical podcasts will cite their resources, they will have credible experts come onto their show as guests, and it just provides that foundation that you are really hearing from the expert, hearing a different opinion. If you are at a certain training program or practicing in a certain setting that maybe things are done a little bit differently somewhere else, you get to hear different perspectives on this stuff.

So I think it is a really convenient and interesting way to disseminate information. And as you listen to medical podcasts, and as medical podcasts grow, there are certain niches that can be filled within the community and different people will kind of choose which pieces of information they need from each various podcast platform and episode that you listen to.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: I have really appreciated how we have kind of democratized information. You know, it is Wikipedia, UpToDate, open access articles. You know, it is actually becoming far more accessible to so many more people, not even just people who have to buy the $250 textbook. I love this as a person who never particularly liked reading textbooks.

Dr. Vivek Patel: One thing to kind of go off of that that people think about is social media, right? When you think about disseminating information on social media, it can often be very polarizing. The beauty about podcasts is that you have the ability to explain your thoughts. You are not just making an inflammatory statement that is going to get a bunch of likes. You can really elucidate what you are thinking about. When we think about some of the inflammatory comments that are made about some cancer trials, for example, in the podcast that we have, if you check out The Fellow on Call, we really break down very complicated information, go through every trial, the history of of every trial that has been done in the space, and we will be very critical, but we will be very critical in a very just reasonable way saying, “Here are the limitations.” And the ability to be able to explain further in the podcast setting, I think really helps.

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky: In the manuscript, you talked a lot about the show notes, and I thought that was such a good point, right? It is not just the podcast, it is also what people are taking away in terms of the references and the show notes in there.

Dr. Vivek Patel: That is one of the biggest things that we actually sought to figure out. There has been no study looking at show notes for podcasts and one of the things that you are doing when you are making a podcast episode, you do a lot of research that goes into that for some of these medical podcasts. We made sure to basically show our work, right, and to have all of the links to all of the trials in there. It was a way that we could actually, in the trial, the fellows that were randomized to the podcast arm were really force-fed these links to these show notes. What we saw with our website numbers, we were able to track these things, is that the numbers grew, that we saw more people were using it and continued to come back. So it is just an interesting thing. There is a way that a podcast can have audio components and visual components with show notes and accompanying materials.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: We are tasking trainees to know more and more, right, more and more things in depth, more clinical trials. I always say they cannot eat the whole chicken, they just want the McNuggets. You have managed to make the McNuggets in a palatable format and kind of serve them up so they are easier to absorb, consume, et cetera.

Now I have a slight shift to a more patient-focused question for you, Eleonora. You know, I know that you have witnessed a generational shift in sort of knowledge and communication in patient communities. Personally, I have seen that older patients may be more likely to entirely rely on my recommendation and may feel less comfortable with true shared decision making, whereas younger patients often, quote unquote, "do their own research." They come sometimes with very concrete requests or demands for their treatments. And I would love to see kind of how you have seen it evolve in your clinic, in your online advocacy, and those conversations.

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky: It is a different time. I love that patients are doing research and that they are advocating for themselves, and it really is that model of shared decision making. But I think some of the challenges that we are facing now is that there are a lot of voices online that are not providing evidence based information. And this is where social media can be challenging because there is no verification of health care credentials. Anyone can call themselves an expert, and we know these algorithms prioritize posts that have likes and engagement even if they are not promoting accurate information based on research and guidelines.

That noise is there. It is hard to drown it out. And so kind of what I think, and I feel strongly that more doctors and health care professionals should be online, we can do our part in promoting the evidence-based information. You know, I am not going to compete with someone who is promoting disinformation, but I think the more we can share credible, evidence information, at least I feel like we are doing our part to empower our patients to listen and to then take those questions to their health care professional.

And I think in a podcast setting, you are right, you can break down the inflammatory posts and the headlines and really dive into it. By having patients share their stories, I think that is really important. Having experts share their experiences, I think that just all goes toward that education and that promoting of accurate information because misinformation is here. And misinformation, you know, partly is always steeped in a little bit of truth in a way, and some people who are saying they believe it.

And so I think it is our responsibility to say, “Here are the trials, here are the studies, here is the data.” And then patients are empowered to make their own decision. But you are right, people are coming in and a lot of what they are asking for comes from wanting to take charge of their own health, which I very much respect. But I think the more we can promote the more accurate information, it helps us all. It helps us as a cancer community to provide the best possible care, which is all we are trying to do every day.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: Absolutely. I know that, you know, I have kind of shifted with this idea of like, I want to make sure I am aligned with my patients, even if I do not necessarily agree with what they are asking for or whatever, ivermectin or whatever non-evidence-based treatment for their cancer. You mentioned the spread of misinformation. I know that there was a good trial that Dr. Skyler Johnson did that showed that actually harmful misinformation was more likely to be shared than actual evidence-based medicine, which kind of aligns with that whole idea of the clicks, the increased engagement.

Now, it is often quoted that about 90% of podcasts don’t make it past their third episode. You are both busy clinicians, researchers. Producing a podcast is one extra thing that you do in a time when we are all multitasking like crazy. We are increasingly buried in the rising demands of unpaid labor from committee work to peer review. I know I am on a committee with you, Eleonora. So I know that we are both putting in time for that.

What are the benefits for you both of hosting podcasts? How long do you think you can continue on this role? How do you ensure that your content is really meeting the needs of the intended audience? I would love to hear from both of you, but Vivek, go ahead and answer first.

Dr. Vivek Patel: Yeah, so definitely different podcast focus. So from my perspective, you know, one of the reasons why I stayed in academic medicine was to educate. It was really, I love teaching and it is something that was really important to me is helping the next generation of doctors learn, nurse practitioners, PAs, nurses, you know, pharmacists, just everybody. I really just love the idea of medical education and also learning from our other colleagues as well, our other pharmacists and the multidisciplinary team that we have. And the thing that keeps me going with this podcast is that it is a way that I can teach people on an international scale. We never thought that was going to be possible when we started out this thing that we are like, "I do not know, let us just release this to our fellowship." And then it grew into this thing where we have international listeners and you know, we are in over 80 countries and it has been just really lucky for us to have gotten to be able to do this.

So what keeps me going is just hearing from people who listen to our podcast, getting an email from somebody from South Africa who just said, “Hey, that episode that you had with the radiation oncologist," because we do invite guests who are oncologists onto our show and they they can just talk about what that is like. And that is what really keeps me going.

It is a lot of time. Making these episodes is not easy. You know, it is a lot of research, a lot of time and we genuinely love doing it, which is what keeps us going. But it is really just, it is what I wanted to do with my career and it is a way to do it on a much larger scale.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: Right. Eleonora, what are your thoughts about what keeps you going?

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky: Yeah, I mean I agree, it is a lot of work. I do it all myself, and I will say there are times where other responsibilities have been higher priority, right, so it has taken a little bit of a back seat, but every time I record an episode and have that conversation, I am just reminded about why I love it. Because when I am talking to patients and hearing their stories, I learn something from each conversation, whether I am talking to an expert. So I think it is education for myself, but you are right, you know, as Vivek said, it is anytime a patient comes in and said, “I listened to your episode and, you know what, I felt empowered to go and ask for this for myself,” or “I felt comfortable bringing up the conversation,” or “I felt like I wasn’t alone.” You know, someone else was going through that. It just reminds me of it is a resource for people and I think it helps my patients. I kind of view this as an extension of the conversations I have in my office. And I do think too, it is allowed me, and for my patients, I will tell them, go listen to this conversation, listen to this conversation. So I think it has helped me also in a very busy practice be able to- kind of it is like an extension of the patient education piece of it.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: I was going to ask that actually, if you refer back to your own podcast for your patients, because I have certainly said, “Hey, you know, this is a really great podcast about that topic. Go ahead and listen to it if you are so inclined, and we can have a further discussion based on that.”

A follow up question for Vivek on that is that have you updated your podcast ever? Like, as for example, knowledge changes, if a study comes out that really is like a paradigm shift. Have you had thoughts about going back and kind of, I know you do typically a series of podcasts on a single topic. Do you want to go back and add like, you know, number four when there were previously just three of, I do not know, early stage breast cancer?

Dr. Vivek Patel: So that is actually the next phase of the podcast. We have a pretty big team that we included really just trainees as the people who work with us because we wanted to also mentor other people through this in research and also in education. And so we are actually actively doing that now. So we are going to have all of these series updated as new information comes. We wanted enough new information to come before we did it. We don’t want to just update it really quickly each time, but that is actually what we are doing.

So we have our series built and that data is not going to go away, and the historical perspective matters. We have ways that we are updating these series as well. So that is that is the next phase of the podcast now that we are kind of churning through these deep dives into these cancer topics.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: Fantastic. We have a little bit of time at the end. Is there anything that we did not talk about in this podcast about podcast? Is there anything you want to share in addition? If you want to talk about your favorite podcast that is not your own podcast, feel free. I am a big fan of Sawbones, which is what I like to call, you know, a family medicine doctor reads Wikipedia to her husband.

Dr. Vivek Patel: I will say two things. So one, I think Interlude is an amazing podcast. So if people havn’t checked it out, I am definitely going to refer patients to it for sure. I mean, there is there is a lot of really interesting episodes in there. So everybody listening to this, if you are, if you got this far through the episode, definitely check out Interlude for sure. But my favorite kind of fun podcast to listen to now is Good Hang with Amy Poehler. Really, really fun podcast to listen to. It is just, I do not know, it is all these, Michelle Obama was on it earlier, Tina Fey. I mean, it is just so, so fascinating and just like it makes, it is just feel good, a feel good podcast. So highly recommend Good Hang.

Dr. Eleonora Teplinsky: Oh, let's see. So lots of good podcasts. I love yours, obviously, Vivek. That is a great one. But my fun one, I would say I really like How I Built This. It is just entrepreneurs and how they got started, different big companies. I think it is really fun. I have been listening to it for years, and they always have such great people on it.

Dr. Fumiko Chino: Great. Well, we have some homework to do.

I want to thank you both for this great conversation today. Many thanks to doctors Patel and Teplinsky, as well as our listeners. You will find the links to the papers that we discussed in the transcript of this episode. If you value the insights you hear from JCO OP's Put Into Practice podcast, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you will join us next month for Put Into Practice's next episode. Until then, if you are not already listening to our featured podcasts, The Fellow on Call and Interlude, I strongly encourage you to try them out.

The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.

Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.

 

Conflicts of Interest

 

Fumiko Chino

Employment

Company: MD Anderson Cancer Center

 

Consulting or Advisory Role

Company: Institute for Value Based Medicine

 

Research Funding

Company: Merck

 

 

Vivek Patel

Stock and Other Ownership Interests

Company: Doximity

 

Honoraria

Company: Curio Science

 

Consulting or Advisory Role

Company: Ipsen

Company: Acrotech Biopharma

 

Travel, Accommodations, Expenses

Company: Doximity

 

Eleonora Teplinsky

Honoraria

Company: Sermo

 

Consulting or Advisory Role

Company: Novartis

Company: Daiichi Sankyo/Astra Zeneca

Company: Pfizer

Company: Immunogen

Company: Novartis

Company: Abbvie

 

Travel, Accommodations, Expenses

Company: OncLive/MJH Life Sciences