Episode
E194 - The Future of Surgical Textbooks: A Conversation with Tanner Schrank from the Journal of Medical Insight
- Published
- Jun 30, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2591
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- https://share.transistor.fm/s/8d5b683b
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Summary
In 2013, when I was a medical student, I wrote an essay entitled, #nomoretextbooks? for the Canadian Undergraduate Surgical Education Committee essay competition. In the essay I wrote, “Tomorrow, I start my vascular surgery rotation. Before bed tonight, I will watch a YouTube video of a femoral-popliteal bypass surgery, review the surgical anatomy from Zollinger’s Atlas of Surgical Operations on my iPad while waiting for my car tires to be changed, listen to a podcast on peripheral vascular disease while riding my exercise bike, and perhaps tweet about my new rotation.” At the time, I really felt strongly that the future of surgical textbooks would be virtual. To explore that future, I spoke with Tanner Schrank, the head of impact for the Journal of Medical Insight (also called JOMI). JOMI is a website that showcases a wide range of operations across multiple disciplines. What I really like about JOMI is the in-depth interviews that are done with surgeons before the operation, where the surgeon will describe their thought process and indications for the operation. The videos are also extraordinarily well filmed, often from multiple camera angles and with great detail. JOMI clearly offers a fantastic resource for residents and attendings to learn new surgical techniques. Tanner and I discuss the implications for a transition to a “virtual” textbook that is more reliant on video than an actual written textbook. I must caveat this episode by saying that I think there is pretty good evidence that reading something and actively trying to absorb information is more effective than passively viewing it. In other words, I am not totally convinced that you can effectively learn something by passively watching video. I think it’s important, especially for trainees, to learn activ…