How to harness the power of social media to benefit patient care
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During ASN Kidney Week 2015, I stood in front of my poster on an education research project I developed in the fellowship program at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine.
I wanted a more effective way to get the information to a larger audience.
Twitter beckoned.
Tweets for nephrologists
I was already using social media for its “social” aspects, sharing pictures and life updates with family and friends. I decided to take the plunge and start using Twitter professionally. If it was a good tool to communicate with my family, why not with my colleagues?
I went to Twitter.com and signed up with the creative username – @Anna_Burgner. I did a search for #KidneyWk and my Twitter feed was filled with interesting educational posts from other nephrologists. I immediately started “following” them to gain access to their tweets.
That first dive into the land of Twitter quickly spiraled into becoming involved with the twitter journal club NephJC, then with the online learning initiative of NephMadness, now in its 10th year (see the Bottom Line column in the February issue of Nephrology News & Issues).
It led to new collaborators, new colleagues and new ideas. It has been great for my career as a nephrologist; however, some of the most surprising benefits I have seen are in the area of patient care.
Education initiatives
There are many social media-based nephrology education initiatives from which one can learn (see box). These include journal clubs to gamification initiatives to live coverage of conferences to user-generated content, like blog posts and “tweetorials.” With all the tools available, it is not surprising that a poster presented at ASN Kidney Week 2021 from Sozio and colleagues1 demonstrated a significant increase in the use of social media-based online education resources in the past 5 years.
The benefit of different types of social media-based nephrology education initiatives is there is something for everyone. I have strong preferences for both auditory and visual learning. I find that listening to podcasts, reading blog posts, checking out pictures from NephroPocus, participating in NephJC journal club discussions and playing NephMadness all work well for me.
Knowledge and practice
Of course, acquiring medical knowledge is just part of the process. We must also make our own interpretations of the knowledge and decide how best to implement these in our practices. This is where the discussions that happen on social media can be helpful, whether the discussions occur as part of a Twitter journal club, like NephJC, or as a standalone conversation.
These conversations often include unique perspectives from diverse participants that can help us better learn how to critically interpret data. This is just one of many benefits of Twitter vs. traditional journal clubs that Stoneman and colleagues note in their article.
Finally, in the constantly moving world we live in, our patients do not always stay in the same place. They may move to other areas of the United States or halfway around the world. With social media, I can easily get recommendations from other nephrologists for placing my patients.
I hope I have piqued the interest of Nephrology News & Issues readers to utilize social media professionally. Start by checking out this year’s NephMadness at www.AJKDblog.
See you online.
- References:
- Ko B, et al. Poster SA-PO155. ASN Kidney Week; Nov. 4-7, 2021.
- Stoneman S, et al. Sem in Neph. 2020;doi:10.1016/j.semnephrol.2020.04.004.
- For more information:
- Anna Burgner, MD, MEHP, is an assistant professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and is also the associate program director for the nephrology fellowship. She serves as the director of the university’s inpatient dialysis clinic and is the associate editor for the Editorial Advisory Board for Nephrology News & Issues. She can be reached at anna.burgner@vumc.org.
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