We have been trying to use twitter during lectures, especially since the group is so large about 100 to 200 can only follow the lecture from another lecture room on a monitor. It wasn’t a success, the question time during and after the lecture was hardly used. Only 8-10 questions were proposed via twitter, but we do have to say that almost every student had many followers thanks to the tiktokings team. The interaction did increase but only with those present in the same lecture room. These were bachelor med students. Next we tried facebook during a week with master med students. The number using the group was more than 100, which is probably around half of the med students.
This finding is also supported by a recent large study with health professions students. These students were in the following health professions: biotechnology, couple and family therapy, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, physical therapy, public health, radiologic and imaging sciences, and pharmacy.
These students (56%) prefer online media as their primary source of information and most of them used facebook (77%). Very few used twitter or linkedin.
They use facebook for keeping connected with friends but also with other med students.
It is a no-cost, viral way of getting the word out about school events and programming and can be used to keep students informed of new classes, special lectures, holiday hours, special events,
and even emergency notices. Above all, it is about being social, allowing students a virtual meeting space to connect with alumni, establish school pride, announce reunions and sporting events, talk about group projects, interact with the community, and beyond.
The authors also suggest setting up fan pages not only for traditional school information but also for leisure activities.
I fully agree with another statement made by the autors
Instead of faculty reminding students to turn off their personal Facebook pages, they can instead direct them to class Facebook pages and use this networking tool.
Giordano C, & Giordano C (2011). Health professions students’ use of social media. Journal of allied health, 40 (2), 78-81 PMID: 21695367
A 34 year old female was brought in to the emergency department Friday afternoon. She was a mother and a quick search of her belongings
provided her business card. It was the card of a obviously successful businesswoman; however, it did not provide any further useful information to explain her presentation. The family doctor was contacted. She explained that besides a remote history of a short depressive episode the patient was quite healthy. She was unable to assist in contacting any family members.
The patient was displaying ‘‘bizarre behavior,’’ along with refusing to open her eyes for an examination. A psychiatric cause was probable after careful diagnostic procedures. The team decided to look up her and her man’s name on Google and via Facebook they were able to contact him. He went to pick up their child from daycare and then to the ED to support his spouse in distress.
The use of Google and Facebook as a last resort went very well in this case, nevertheless in the same journal a med student nearly got sent away from med school after posting an inappropriate statement as a comment on facebook.
My posting on Facebook was brought to the attention of some of the administrators at our institution as a violation of its honor code, and it nearly ended my status as a medical student and my dream of becoming a doctor. As a result of my actions, I was required to make an appearance before the Student Promotions Committee to explain what had happened and to explain why I should be allowed to continue my medical studies. Needless to say, it was one of the most humbling experiences I have ever been through.
It’s time for “social media competence” in med school, with a course during the curriculum. What do you think?
Ben-Yakov, M., & Snider, C. (2011). How Facebook Saved Our Day! Academic Emergency Medicine DOI: 10.1111/j.1553-2712.2011.01199.x
Strausburg, M. (2011). How Facebook Almost Ended My Career With a Single Click Academic Emergency Medicine DOI: 10.1111/j.1553-2712.2011.01198.x
This animation film was submitted by a med student to YouTube for the instructor of a course about ‘Narratives of Ageing:Exploring Creative Approaches to Dementia Care’.
Students visited a locked unit at a care facility for people with Alzheimer’s disease. They used YouTube to watch streamed video made by Alzheimer’s disease advocacy groups, twitter was used for real time communication between med students and instructors, Skype was used to interact with and talk to various experts.
The instructors took and uploaded pictures to Flickr of students and residents interacting. Several students used these pictures for a creative final project which resulted in a scrapbook that was given to the residents. And one of them produced this animation film.
This is one of two innovative pilot studies done with graduate med students and social media. Students rated both courses highly, mentioning the helpfulness of social media.
On the down side: demands on time outside the classroom; concerns about privacy, and lack of facility with technology.
Social media can augment learning opportunities in many medical schools, and help students acquire tools and skill sets for problem solving, networking and collaboration in the 21st century. The command of such technologies will be increasingly important to the practice of medicine in the 21st century.
I think they used social media very creatively, but was it worth while? What do you think?
George, D., & Dellasega, C. (2011). Social media in medical education: two innovative pilot studies Medical Education DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04124.x
The Australian Medical Association Council of Doctors-in-Training (AMACDT), the New Zealand Medical Association Doctors-in-Training Council (NZMADITC), the New Zealand Medical Students’ Association (NZMSA), and the Australian Medical Students’ Association (AMSA) are committed to upholding the principles of medical professionalism. As such, we have created some practical guidelines to assist doctors and medical students to continue to enjoy the online world, while maintaining professional standards.
Social software or the use of Internet (Web 2.0) for generating your own content, to connect with one another and to share and manage content with each other is used by young people. How do first year medical students use this social software? This could be important because these networks could become networks of learners as soon as we’re able to create useful applications.
over 90% of med students use instant messaging, 94% of females aND 93% of males
70% used social networking sites (facebook, twitter, myspace)
20% read blogs
8% write their own blog
20% of male medical students contributed to wikis and used media sharing sites such as flickr and youtube
social bookmarking was hardly used (delicio.us, digg)
How was this study done?
all first year medical students (n=212) at the University of Leeds completed a paper based self-administered questionnaire at the time of their information skills (IT) assessment.
Overall males were more engaged in social media. The use of these media has increased over the years. In previous research in 2006 80% of students used instant messaging, 24% used social networks, 31% shared photos, blogs were read by 38% and 21% wrote a blog. A survey in 2006 at the University of Oxford showed the high use of instant messaging (82%) and social networking (60%), 58% read blogs, 38% wrote their own blog, 19% used flickr, 57% used YouTube and 19% used del.icio.us.
Students preferred the use of social software above the virtual learning environment provided by the institution.
Why is this important?
Educators are mostly digital immigrants whereas the student is a digital native. Educators should recognize the potential of social software without entering the networks of students. As the authors importantly state
The social networking sites have exciting potential for medical education but only if the educator can resist the temptation to meddle in what the students are doing.
Next the authors suggest some examples on how social networking could be used for education, but several examples are present on the net.
Sandars, J., Homer, M., Pell, G., & Crocker, T. (2010). Web 2.0 and social software: the medical student way of e-learning Medical Teacher, 2147483647-5 DOI: 10.3109/01421590701798729
Emails, social updates, SMS—they’re constantly coming at you, seemingly wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. Do you have a place, a ritual, or another means of escaping digital noise? What’s your preferred way of getting away from it all?
Want to participate in this poll about How Do You Unplug or Go “Off the Grid”? Have a look over at “>Lifehacker.com
I’m having a problem. I’m an editor for the Dutch/Flemish Journal of Psychiatry. Since I’m a blogger and on twitter and using many more web 2.0 tools I’m supposed to be the expert on web 2.0 and our journal. We’ve revamped our website and the journal is even on twitter. We’re planning presence on Facebook and LinkedIn and probably on some more of these 2.0 web tools.
My problem is that before using all those tools I think we need a web strategy. When being on Facebook or LinkedIn we should know what were going to do, who can subscribe, who does the selection of posts or topics, who puts them on the social web. How to respond to requests, reactions from readers and participants. In short What do you want with all those social media as a psychiatric journal?
I’ve learned from an excellent course for science editors that your journal is also a brand. We’ve the fortunate circumstances that our Journal comes with the membership of the Dutch Association of Psychiatry. All members are also subscribed to the journal, it’s part of the membership. Since it’s written in Dutch with English abstracts the audience for the journal and probably also the social media are all settled. Or should we start writing in English on the social media? On twitter it’s mostly Dutch and sometimes English. I fully agree that your journal can also be a brand. To my opinion for our journal that comes to uniform presence in the sense of lay out and content on website and social media.
It also means that to my opinion our Journal can be characterized as an organization in which customer intimacy is the main object. In a recent publication about Web 2.0-based web strategies for three different types of organizations they define several organization typologies important for the different needs of a web strategy solution. The other two organization types are Operational Excellence, and Product Leadership.
The next step is to formulate a web strategy that is effective for the specific situation of the organization. Important pases in developing a web strategy are awareness, the situation to be, the development of the web strategy and evaluation. By awareness is meant answers to important questions such as, who are the clients, is the journal and it’s editors aware of web 2.0 benefits, what are the current trends in the industry, what movements does the competition make? Also important is the question about what channels are mostly used by the readers. To my opinion our readers are not that web savvy. At present we only use a website, podcast, RSS feed and email subscriptions as well as twitter.
Since a Journal is all about information and education I think we constantly need new knowledge and keep innovating. Another important goal for a Journal is to involve readers and encourage them to collaborate and add value to our Journal in all it’s aspects. We need web 2.0 in order to obtain added value for users and improve participation in the Journals objectives.
According to the results published in the afore mentioned publication an organization based on consumer intimacy needs a few of several concepts in web strategy the most. These kind of organizations need software or web 2.0 tools that can be accessed with several devices. Just a single website approachable with a PC is not enough, we need to think about users with smart phones, iPads, netbooks, you name it. More important is the understanding of our customers needs and to be able to tailor our products and services to the customers needs. This way you can improve customer loyalty and participation. This means harnessing collective ideas of what the customers really need, as well as an excellent quality of information about the customers. This will be maximized by allowing the customers to access and use the web applications from different devices.
Another important aspect for a web strategy is multi-channeling with rich user experiences or Rich Internet Applications. A Rich Internet Application (RIA) is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop applications, typically delivered either by way of a site-specific browser, or via a browser plug-in. Examples are also flash, java, javascript, ajax but also html5. They improve the user friendliness of the applications and again improve the bond with the readers and improve their participation.
Still this advice is somewhat abstract, so if any of you could point me in some direction for more information on web 2.0 strategies for medical journals please let me know in the comments. Will probably share them again in a follow up post, it’s still work in development.
Senoaji Wijaya, Marco Spruit, Wim Scheper, & Johan Versendaal (2010). Web 2.0-based webstrategies for three different types of organizations Computers in Human Behavior : 10.1016/j.chb.2010.07.041
An excellent medlib round at Highlight Health. This edition is all about how social media is being used to promote health information online.
Besides links to posts on blogs about twitter, facebook, and other social media in Health and Medicine the autor also proposes to tweet and share posts using the Twitter hashtags #medinfo and #medlibs.
If you like a particular post, share it with your friends and be sure to add both hashtags.
Beginning March 2009 the number of hospitals on using social media such as twitter in the US was 206, the current number is 214 (March 31). The growth is mainly due to popular social media app Twitter. But hospitals are also on facebook, have a blog or website. For an overview of the use of social media by hospitals with links please visit the list with the most current hospitals on social media on Found in Cache
Now what should they do with twitter, how can hospitals and physicians benefit from twitter? According to BrainTwits of Michael Lara, MD.
According to Michael Lara Twitter use falls under three categories:
Physician to Physician communication for general medical questions, curbside consults
Live blogging from medical conferences
As a Tool for Communications Regarding Direct Patient Care, such as hhysician-to-team member about non-urgent matters and office staff-to-patient about appointment reminders
He also warns against the use of twitter
I’ve also found that there are several scenarios where Twitter should NOT be used: To communicate directly with patients and their families, To communicate with anyone regarding matters that require urgent or timely action, To answer inquiries from anyone regarding details about patient care, even if from a recognized Twitter account.
For security reasons the use of twitter among physicians about these topics should solely be done by DM or direct messaging.
One comment I have is that physicians who practice in multiple sites could use it as a communication tool with their offices similar to how pagers have been used until now. One way to manage such accounts is to protect updates and only allow a limited number of colleagues or office staff to view updates.
John Sharp in a presentation on SlideShare suggest using twitter for: press releases, emergency communication, personal health diary, weight management support, daily health tips, brainstorming and updating families during procedures. He is looking at the use of twitter by doctors and hospitals more from a patient perspective.
Other uses of twitter e.g. surgeons at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit used Twitter, to provide real-time updates on a robot-assisted surgery. The Twitter updates were accompanied by YouTube videos of the surgery. The information was available to 385 Twitter users who signed up for the feed, according to hospital officials. The aim of Twitter updates was to expose patients, medical students and physicians to the hospital’s new surgical procedures and technology. In the same hospital the same procedure was used during brain surgery. More than 1,900 who subscribe to the microblogging social network site Twitter followed the Henry Ford Hospital. And here while surgeons are preparing to remove a cancerous tumor from a man’s kidney.
Twitter is suggested to be of help for medical education as well. A special twitter group is formed for this topic with the hashtag#meded. For an in depth discussion about the use of twitter in medical education please read a recent post on this blog: Twitter and medical education especially the comments.
In this post there is also a slideshow on twitter and education. Roughly it comes down to these uses of twitter in education:
It is good to be critical and not to optimistic about the use of web 2.0 in general and twitter especially in medical education. Read Wishful thinking in medical education:
I think that before doing that we need to figure out if these tools actually deliver something that is useful to medical students and to doctors. What gap are they actually filling? Medical education can certainly be improved. But we need to describe the problems before we come up with the solutions.
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