Medical schools should use Wikipedia as a tool to educate students

What is it about?

We teach a fourth-year medical school elective in which students select a health-related Wikipedia article and edit it to make it more useful to readers by adding the latest, most pertinent literature, re-organizing and contextualizing content and improving readability.

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Why is it important?

Wikipedia has been shunned as an academic resource but research shows a very large percentage of medical students and faculty use it for reference. Given that fact, why not make it as useful as possible? Students learn literature research, information synthesis, and writing skills they can use for the rest of their careers, even if they never edit another WP article