Chisolm, an assistant professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, said that she is one of a growing number of medical professionals who, despite the present-day climate of strict patient privacy regulations and oversight, see the benefits of using social media to supplement their work and interact with colleagues, patients and the general public.
Chisolm connects with others through her Twitter accounts “whole_patients,” intended to demystify psychiatry and psychotherapy for patients and doctors, and “psychpearls,” which is targeted to learners interested in “clinical pearls” about psychiatry.
To help expose future medical professionals to the benefits and potential pitfalls of social media use, Chisolm and Tabor Flickinger, a clinical education fellow, have set forth on the design of a social media curriculum for students at the School of Medicine. Ultimately, the two plan to design, pilot, study and implement a curriculum that uses social media to promote medical humanism and professionalism.
Ah, we wrote about Dr. Chisolm once before after she gave Grand Rounds at Hopkins on "Prescribing Psychotherapy." And, by all means, follow her on Twitter! (Yes, I'll be tweeting this).
The new spam guard is working, I see. Takes me three or four tries. Maybe I will be able to use it properly if I get my knees replaced?
ReplyDeleteBehaveNet has been doing this for awhile:
ReplyDeleteCNS Drug of the day: #CNSDOD
Notable Person: #BHCPOD
Behavioral Health Care Term of the Day: #BHCTOD
I definitely see social media as an education tool. I'm still in training, but when I come across an interesting article I blog about it. I appreciate the education I get reading medical blogs, and I know some of my fellow residents read my posts for educational purposes.
ReplyDeleteFacebook and Twitter are the means of communication these days.
Wikipedia is the most referenced source in most medical schools. Harrison's is great, and the DSM is nice; but many of us in training don't look there first. We find out about new topics via Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter.
In my undergrad and now nursing school, the following has become a mantra....WIKIPEDIA IS NOT A VALID SOURCE.
ReplyDeleteA bit scary to hear its the most cited source in med school. Can I see a citation? Wait...will it be Wikipedia?
Medicoglia: I am glad you said it. i was wondering if anyone would. In my world, elementary school children are being taught not to rely on Wikipedia. It can be useful as a very basic jumping off point, but it riddled with errors, opinion dressed up as fact, and worse. So that also describes a lot of text books. Not a good excuse. A med student would have access online and in "real life" to vast libraries of texts, journals, anything a student could want. I used to love searching the stacks and going home with piles of books. I don't mind that my kids do that online. I do want them to have to think for themselves. My favorite Wikipedia story is about an article that mentions my very good friend and then provides a link to access more info about this individual. The link leads to a person of a similar name who has been dead for years and has no association to the person it purports to describe. My kids know this person well. Showing them the link has helped them understand the limits of Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteCorrection - Wikipedia is the first source - that's where med students go to actually understand what the term, procedure, disease, or medication does.
ReplyDeleteTHEN they go to all the medical resources: Epocrates, UptoDate, Harrisons, DSM to learn exactly what they should do and why.
Wikipedia isn't perfect, but at least it usually makes sense.