Reflections on Six Months of Social Media in Medical Education

It has been a wild ride over the past six months.  I have had the opportunity to meet many new people through Twitter over the course of these six months.  I have learned many more things about how to use Social Media to improve education.  Below are a few thoughts.

1.       Social Media is not a bad thing.  It is about a new way of communication.  This is a good thing.  Several generations (particularly my own) are hesitant to jump into Social Media for fear of “doing something wrong”, especially those in medicine.  This is unfortunate.  Yes, there are clearly limits to what should and what should not be done on Social Media, especially with regard to patients.  But there is nothing wrong with communicating with other people. 

2.       Social Media has made me more efficient, not less.  Depending on whom one chooses to follow, it is interesting to learn about new information so quickly.  I encourage those hesitant to start in Social Media to “just try it”.

3.       There are some very intelligent people on Twitter who have great things to say about medical education.   This should be shared, not suppressed.  People like @RyanMadanickMD , @FutureDocs , @daniellenjones , @Neil_Mehta , and many others provide great insights into medical education, from many different points of view.

4.       Twitter chats take some getting used to, but are definitely great at learning and sharing information with others.  Different medical hashtags provide opportunity to share and learn from many others with similar interests.   This site is great at learning about those different hashtags.

Examples of great links which I found from people I follow on Twitter, about Social Media in Medical Education (in no particular order):

http://lifeinthefastlane.com/2011/11/essentials-of-em-talk-1/

http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/social-media-in-medical-education-video.html

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=0ASyDkfrsAcUjZGRmZzc4N2NfMjIwZ2N6NXRrYzg

http://www.slideshare.net/ryanmadanickmd/lc11-015so-me-in-meded

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/fair-use/best-practices/media-literacy

http://blogedutech.blogspot.com/2011/09/incorporating-web-20-tools-in-workshop.html

http://socialmediainmeded.blogspot.com/

http://blog.acpinternist.org/2011/08/using-social-media-in-medical-education.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AcpInternistBlog+%28ACP+Internist+Blog%29

http://blog.slideshare.net/2011/08/22/teaching-with-twitter-turning-microblogging-into-learning/

Please comment if you have any others on the topic.

Thank you to all of my Twitter friends/followers for your great ideas/links/thoughts on using Twitter for Medical Education.  Keep up the great Tweets!