Using Twitter in Clinical Education and Practice

Abstract

Faculty and residents are faced with many competing demands on their time, including the need to stay current with the literature and new clinical developments in the specialty. Using technologies available at one's fingertips allows us to stay current in our fields of interest as clinicians and educators but may seem overwhelming and intimidating at first. To address this challenge, we outline how Twitter can be used as a professional tool to efficiently stay up-to-date in medicine and education.Twitter is a social media site created in 2006 that uses 140-character messages to share information and connects individuals using “@” and topics using “#” at http://www.twitter.com. The number of physicians using social media in a professional capacity is increasing, with physicians tweeting mainly during working hours,1 averaging 1 in 8 medically related tweets (13%, or 1614 tweets from 237 medical professionals).2 A 2011 survey of physicians found that 24% of respondents used social media daily and 61% weekly to explore online medical information.3 Many physicians, however, remain wary of social media's benefits in their clinical practice.2–4 Although others have delineated how to use Twitter for teaching learners in the classroom, those reviews do not describe use of Twitter for physicians' professional development and advancement.4Twitter provides an immediate means of efficiently accessing current information for as much or as little time as the clinician can spare. Twitter is redefining the meaning of a “community of practice” as residents and faculty engage with others worldwide to:For more examples of people, journals, and organizations to follow, and a full list of references, see supplemental material online at jgme.org.