Performance Analysis of a Radiation Oncology Educational Podcast

Asynchronous podcast education is a popular supplementary tool, with up to 88% of medical residents reporting its use. Radiation oncology podcasts remain scarce. The authors analyzed the early performance, listenership, and engagement of the first education-specific radiation oncology medical podcast.

Episode data and listener demographics were gathered from Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Episodes were case based, categorized by disease subsite, and reviewed by a board-certified radiation oncologist. Listenership was defined by the number of plays per day (ppd) on unique devices, averaged up to 60 days from publication. Episode engagement was defined as a percentage of plays on unique devices playing >40% of an episode within a single session. Quantitative end points included episode engagement and listenership. Pearson's correlation coefficient calculations were used for analysis.

From July 2022 to March 2023, 20 total episodes had 13,078 total plays over 227 days. The median episode length was 13.8 min (range, 9.2-20.1 min). Listener demographics were as follows: 54.4% men, 44.0% women, 1.3% not specified, and 0.3% nonbinary, with ages 18 to 22 (1%), 23 to 27 (13%), 28 to 34 (58%), 35 to 44 (22%), 45 to 59 (4%), and ≥60 (2%) years. Episodes were played in 53 countries, with the most plays in North America (71.5%), followed by Asia (10.2%), Europe (8.2%), Oceania (8.0%), Africa (1.5%), and South America (0.5%). There was a 585.2% increase in listenership since initiation, with median growth of 46.0% per month. Median listenership and engagement were 11.3 ppd (interquartile range, 10.3-13.8 ppd) and 81.4% (interquartile range, 72.0%-84.2%) for all episodes, respectively. A significant negative relationship between episode length and engagement was observed (r[20] = -0.51, P = .02). There was no statistically significant relationship between ppd and episode length (r[20] = -0.19, P = .42).

The significant rise in listenership, high episode engagement, and large international audience support a previously unmet need in radiation oncology medical education that may be supplemented by podcasts.