JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The increasing shift towards a more generalised medical undergraduate curriculum has led to limited exposure to sub-specialities including neurosurgery. The lack of standardised teaching may result in insufficient coverage of the core learning outcomes. Case-based discussions (CbDs) are often utilised in the undergraduate medical curriculum to link theory to practice and develop clinical reasoning. Social media (SoMe) in medical education is becoming an increasingly accepted and popular way for students to meet learning objectives outside of formal medical school teaching.

Objective:

We delivered a series of CbDs over SoMe to attempt to meet core learning needs in neurosurgery and determine whether SoMe-based CBDs were an efficient and acceptable method of education.

Methods:

Twitter was used as a medium to host nine CbDs pertaining to common neurosurgical conditions in practice. A sequence of informative and interactive ‘Tweets’ were formulated prior to the live CbDs and were tweeted in progressive order. Users interacted by replying to tweets to answer questions and raise discussions, as well as liking and retweeting. Moderation was performed by a neurosurgery resident, with oversight from an attending. Demographic data and participant feedback were collected using Qualtrics (Qualtrics LLC. USA).

Results:

277 participants were recorded across the nine CbDs with 654,584 impressions generated. Feedback responses were received from 135 participants (48.7%). Participants indicated an increase of 77% in their level of knowledge after participating. 57% (n=77) had previous CbD experience as part of traditional medical education, with 62% (n=84) receiving a form of medical education previously through SoMe. All participants (n=135, 100%) felt the CbDs objectives were met and would attend future sessions and 99% of participants (n=134) indicated that their expectations were met by the SoMe CbDs.

Conclusions:

SoMe has been demonstrated to be a favourable and feasible medium to host live, text-based interactive CbDs. Delivering CbDs over SoMe is a useful approach to teaching undergraduate neurosurgery and is easily translatable to all domains of medicine and surgery.