2023-08-31 11:56:00
Study reveals how doctors using social media are revolutionizing medical education
August 31, 2023. 1:56 pm
A new study led by Dr. John W. Ayers of the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California, San Diego, in the United States, reveals that some doctors are taking advantage of the reach of social networks to share and discuss medical advances, so that…
A new study led by Dr. John W. Ayers of the Qualcomm Institute at the University of California San Diego (United States), reveals that some doctors are taking advantage of the reach of social networks to share and discuss medical advances, so that they are revolutionizing education regarding medicine, as published in the journal ‘JAMA’.
The research team obtained all publications containing #MedEd made on X (formerly Twitter), from January 2012 to December 2022. There were 4,397,691 original posts with the #MedEd hashtag on X during this time. The number of publications increased every year, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, last time from 692,095 during 2021 to 1,178,647 during 2022. ‘To put our findings in context, social media is the largest publisher of medical knowledge – says Ayers, vice chief of innovation in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and a fellow at the Qualcomm Institute. Unlike traditional knowledge resources, which are held in medical schools or paid for, social media harnesses the collective wisdom and insights of millions of doctors in a transparent way‘. “However, for health professionals like me, social media is incredibly valuable for keeping up with the latest medical advances,” says Aaron Goodman, MD, associate clinical professor at the University of California School of Medicine at San Diego and co-author of the study, who calls himself Papa Heme on X, where he shares content on oncology and hematology with his more than 127,000 followers, mostly doctors. “New medical knowledge is often nuanced, and well-informed people can have valid and different opinions regarding the same data,” added Davey Smith, MD, MD, study co-author, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine and co-director of the university’s Altman Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. Social media is a way to quickly spread that information and offer a platform to vigorously debate the veracity of this new knowledge’. “The potential of #MedEd to improve medical education is considerable, but the risks of underestimating #MedEd are potentially greater,” Smith said. Our study suggests that now is the time to invest more resources in #MedEd to unite the tens of millions of healthcare professionals around the world in continuous learning and teaching.’
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