Island Med Student

Med school isn’t the only place to learn about the art of medicine. There are many colleges, universities, and other institutions that offer free online medical courses and education resources to self-learners around the world. Here are 10 free resources to explore in your spare time:

MIT OCW – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers more than 50 free health science and technology courses through the school’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) program. Courses typically include lectures, reading lists, assignments, exams, and other self-study materials.

JHSPH OCW – The John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health also offers free courses to self-learners through their OCW program. Courses cover a wide range of public health and medical topics, including child health, adolescent health, public health, mental health, aging, chronic diseases, infectious disease, nutrition, and health policy.

Open Michigan – The University of Michigan provides several free medical courses that are open to everyone with an Internet connection. The school also offers courses in nursing and dentistry.

LearnersTV – LearnersTV provides hundreds of free medical lectures from colleges and universities around the world. Lecture categories include immunology, bacteriology, virology, parasitology, mycology, infectious disease, anatomy, physical examinations, and neuroanatomy.

Health Sciences Online – This virtual learning center provides high quality courses and references for medicine, public health, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, basic sciences, and other health sciences disciplines. The center currently offers more than 50,000 hand-selected resources.

GFMER – The Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research offers hundreds of free education resources on their website. Resources include free medical journals, databases, books, and professional publications.

Medscape – Medscape is a free online resource for specialists, primary care physicians, and other health professionals. Offerings include articles, journal commentary, book reviews, medical news, free textbooks and medical journals, conference coverage, and medical practice information.

eMedicine – More than 10,000 physicians contribute to this clinical reference from Web MD. The online reference includes nearly 7,000 medical articles.

Medical Animation Library – This online library from the University of Pennsylvania hosts medical animations that can be viewed with free video players. Animations cover a wide range of medical topics. Each animation includes a short explanation of the topic to help viewers understand what they are seeing on the video.

SlideWorld – Designed specifically for medical professionals, this online library contains more than 7 million PowerPoint slide presentations. Slides are sorted into 20 medical topics and are easy to find using the site’s search features.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about top online colleges for OnlineCollege.org.