2024 Scholars' Research Symposium Abstract: Kindling Wellness: Creating a Student-Run Podcast Series on Medical Student Wellness.

Introduction: Research has consistently shown that the prevalence of burnout symptoms (such as emotional and physical exhaustion, cynicism, or lack of interest in schoolwork, the sense of incompetence, or the feeling that you cannot be effective) in medical students is greater than the prevalence in the general population. Students with preexisting anxiety, depression, mood disorder or other psychological distress are more vulnerable to burnout. It is estimated that at least half of U.S. medical students experience or are affected by burnout during their education. With the high rates of burnout symptoms in medical students, it is becoming increasingly important to implement strategies to build student resilience to burnout. Overall, one of the first steps to decrease rates of burnout and improve medical student wellbeing is for students and faculty to develop an awareness and understanding of burnout, by exploring issues that may contribute to it. The Kindling Wellness podcast was created to serve as a wellness resource for medical students and health professionals.

Project description: The initial 5-episode series of the podcast Kindling Wellness was built on the metaphor of a fire as one's wellness and the necessary components needed to keep a fire burning (heat, oxygen, and fuel). The Podcast was developed in 3 phases. Phase 1: Content Development included planning topics for discussion, choosing guests to interview, and deciding what platform on which to publish content. Phase 2: Podcast Interviews involved researching discussion topics, writing interview questions, interviewing guest speakers, and editing the content. Phase 3: Deployment and Awareness included publishing the Podcast on application platform - Spotify for Podcasters. The podcast was advertised using flyers posted in the medical school building, emails distributed to current medical students, and promotional posts via social media pages dedicated to the podcast. The podcast utilization was evaluated using analytics captured from the podcast application platform.

Outcomes: Podcast episodes were released over a 6-month span from November 2022 to June 2023. The 1st podcast was a discussion with Michelle Schimelpfenig, DO about an overview of the podcast series and of medical student wellness. The 2nd podcast discussed mental health and counseling with Rebecca Glover, LPC-MH. The 3rd podcast was entitled "Creating margin and practicing gratitude" with Craig Uthe, MD. The 4th podcast was "Finding your Fire" with Gary Timmerman, MD and Jenny Guido, MD, and the 5th podcast was entitled "Fueling your wellness and leadership" featuring Tim Ridgway, MD. Podcast analytics were recorded simultaneously as listeners played the podcast episodes. There were 98 all-time plays; the first episode was the most listened to at 60 plays. The age of listeners ranged from 18-59 years old with most listeners in the 23-27 age range (35%).

Conclusions: The Kindling Wellness student-run podcast was created as a wellness resource for medical students and health professionals to develop awareness and understanding of burnout. The 5-episode podcast was deployed on Spotify for Podcasters and accessed by 98 listeners. It is interesting to note that based on the age range of the listeners, people other than medical students accessed the site. This podcast series serves as a resource, in a novel medium, available at University of South Dakota Sanford School of Medicine for medical students and the public. Future podcasts could be added to this platform.