Twitter-Augmented Journal Club: Educational Engagement and Experience So Far.

Abstract

Social media is a nascent medical educational technology. The benefits of Twitter include (1) easy adoption; (2) access to experts, peers, and patients across the globe; (3) 24/7 connectivity; (4) creation of virtual, education-based communities using hashtags; and (5) crowdsourcing information using retweets. We report on a novel Twitter-augmented journal club for anesthesia residents: its design, implementation, and impact. Our inaugural anesthesia Twitter-augmented journal club succeeded in engaging the anesthesia community and increasing residents' professional use of Twitter. Notably, our experience suggests that anesthesia residents are willing to use social media for their education.