Using Twitter in undergraduate medicine – case study#fluscenarioDr Ellie HothersallTheme Lead for Public HealthDeputy Convenor Systems in PracticeLocum Consultant in Public Health

Epidemiology

•Why•Who•When•What•How•(Evaluation)

Public Health is “common sense”•Easy•Concepts rather than facts•Hard to assess•Difficult to get engagement from majority

The solution?

•Get ‘em while they’re young•Try to develop conversations not teach

facts•Make it relevant and engaging

Purpose of #fluscenario

•To introduce you to pandemic ‘flu and emergency planning

•To develop an online learning conversation

•(To understand there is more to public health than drinking water and inequalities)

•(To understand how social media will influence your professional life)

#fluscenario

•Based on previous work by nhssm.org•Original scenarios written by Mr Alex

Talbott and Dr Chloe Sellwood •Twitter chat with Social Media emphasis•Easy to tweak to student focus

OutlinePhase 1 •Background

•Preparation

Phase 2 •Early outbreak•Communication and risk

Phase 3 •Late outbreak•Prevention and mitigation

Phase 4 •Wrap up•Lessons learned

What happened?

•2,987 Tweets using the hashtag #fluscenario

•Contributions from staff, students, others•Mean number of Tweets per student was

13.8 (range 1-88). •Peak Twitter activity was in the first 12

hours, with >1,000 Tweets within 8 hours of launching the first scenario.

Evaluation

•“did not understand the point of the exercise”

•“waste of time”

•“I enjoyed using twitter as a new way of teaching and I feel like I learnt a lot from the opportunity to discuss the flu scenario with my peers.”

•“Whooping cough: Three more babies die in outbreak http://t.co/VXAIC5Bu #fluscenario”

•“Reading about the emergence of multidrug-resistant TB and automatically relating this to the spread of #fluscenario. Hello Library Weekends.”