Dear Program Directors,
I understand how tough it can be to come up with quality resident education to fulfill educational requirements on a weekly basis all year around. For most programs that is approximately 5 hours of conference material, once a week, pretty much every week of the year. That equals 260 hours of educational material that needs to be high yield, engaging, and entertaining enough to hold the attention of the millennial generation. This is an especially daunting task if tackled alone. So don’t do this alone! Start a program-wide Twitter account!
#EMConf
Social media is solving the challenge of bringing learners together, in one geographical location to share in resident education. And this is already happening on a regular basis every week on Twitter via the hashtag #EMConf. A core group of residents and faculty from various EM programs across the country have grouped together and came up with the concept of tweeting out conference learning pearls from their respective weekly EM resident conferences. This way, no matter where a resident or EM program is located, they can access these learning pearls from other residencies. Imagine learning points from interesting simulation cases, EBM literature, inspiration from grand round speakers, career pointers – all funneled to your account. Twitter is also a great way to review learning points after the fact by simply accessing the hashtag #EMConf. The resident can browse through the points at their leisure.
Dr. David Marcus (@EMIMDoc), has created a specific website that collects all the tweets that have ever been sent on #EMConf. (This site also does a great job of listing other hashtags associated with the FOAM conversation.)
How can a program participate?
- Create a Twitter account that represents the EM residency program.
- Decide who will be in charge of that account: program director, assistant director, chief resident, designated resident.
- If there are restrictions placed by the institution’s social media policy, then residents and EM faculty can tweet learning pearls through their own individual accounts.
- Modify your institution’s social media policy.
- Remember to incorporate the hashtag #EMConf into each tweet.
- Write a tweet pearl.
- Press send.
Why join?
Mike Cadogan, the brains behind FOAM and collaborative education states it best, use Twitter and #EMConf to:
Connect
Engage
Inform
Reflect
Share
Challenge
Support
Lead
Learn
Inspire
Nervous about starting?
No problem! You can still participate by simply reading through the pearls that are generated each week without having to comment or contribute.
I look forward to learning from all the programs around the country and engaging with you all in the new wave of medical education via social media and Twitter!
Sincerely,
Nikita – your friendly Twitter advocate
P.S. I am more than willing to discuss this further with anyone, just send me a tweet!
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