Innovation and Technology

Technology Available for Teaching

Access to these technology resources will be provided to students and faculty when assigned. Please contact The Office of Medical Education for more information.

Slido is an interactive tool used by faculty to help create active learning experiences. It allows questions, polls, quizzes, and other activities to be inserted into presentations to increase student engagement. Faculty can learn more about Slido through the links below.
- How do I get started with Slido on Google Slides?
- Which Slido features work best with the material in my presentation?
- How do I use the standalone web version of Slido?
USMLE-Rx is a question bank and flashcard learning resource for students.
MindMup is a collaborative mind-mapping tool.
- View the MindMup handbook, which is geared towards students.
Aquifer is a source for clinical, case-based learning.

Social Media & FOAMED – Joe T.

Developed by M4 Student – Dr. Joseph Torres (2018 Cohort)

Introduction to Social Media and FOAMEd

Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic the use of remote learning has accelerated. Video lectures, blogs and podcasts have become commonplace in medical education. The aim of this section is to show faculty and students effective strategies to use twitter, blogs and podcasts as an adjunct to our curriculum at the School of Medicine. In addition, social media such as twitter provides easy access to experts in the field allowing students to network in real time. Using social media has caveats, the next section summarizes the policies present at HMH and the SOM so faculty and students appropriately utilize the resources.

Social Media & FOAMED

Please note that HMH and the SOM have policies regarding Social Media use. Please see these at the end of this section.

Introduction to FOAMed

FOAMed (Free Open Access Medical Education) is defined as Free Open Online Medical education independent of the platform. Essentially FOAMed is open platform teaching no matter the media, whether it be through blogs, podcasts, tweets & online videos. While the use of videos and blogs has a use in medical education and has been used for years before, what makes FOAMed different is the interaction between experts and learners. From using specific hashtags on Twitter, Twitter hangouts about specific topics or using a google meets group, the point is to supply learners with content from experts, teaching some of the most up to date information. This idea has taken off in the specialties of Emergency Medicine and Critical Care with the creation of blogs such as Life in the Fast Lane and EM crit.

Medical education has been adopting the FOAMed strategy especially institutes such as the Harvard Macy institute and the Alliance for Clinical Education (@mededchat) who specifically uses hashtags (#mededchat) on Twitter to foster discussion. The use of FOAMed has accelerated due to the COVID pandemic forcing all learning to be done online. It is important to note that while the usage of FOAMed may lessen as the world goes back in person, it will never go away.

In broader use, social media outlets have been used to create professional brands, whether it be personal brands or residency based which can be taken advantage of by our medical students.

Intro to blogs:

Blogs have been one of the biggest components of FOAMed to date, so much so a few emergency medicine residencies have started to use them as pre-work for curriculum days. Blogs allow for distinct lessons to be made, while having comment section that are robust. Comment section on blogs often allow experts in their fields to give reactions or critiques about what was covered and are easily seen by learners. It is important to distinguish that some blogs are peer-reviewed and some aren’t. The peer reviewability being one of the strengths of blogs that are hard to establish in videos and tweets. The biggest names being in Emergency Medicine i.e Academic life in Emergency Medicine (AliEM), Life in the Fast Lane (LITFL), REBEL EM (Rational Evidence Based Evaluation of Literature in Emergency Medicine). In the realm of Medical education there is AM rounds (Blog for the journal of Academic Medicine AM Rounds: https://academicmedicineblog.org/

Emergency Medicine Blog links:

Rebel EM*: https://rebelem.com/
Life in the Fast Lane*: https://litfl.com/
AliEM*: https://www.aliem.com/
EM Crit: https://emcrit.org/

*: Peer-Reviewed

Introduction to Twitter

What is Twitter: Twitter is a service for friends, family, and coworkers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent messages. People post Tweets, which may contain photos, videos, links, and text. These messages are posted to your profile, sent to your followers, and are searchable on Twitter search. (From Twitter.com)

Why use Twitter in Medical Education: Twitter is a social media platform that allows spread of information in real time from peer to peer. This gives the opportunity for students and faculties to have easy access to experts in their field.

Twitter Hashtag summary:

A hashtag—written with a # symbol—is used to index keywords or topics on Twitter. This function was created on Twitter and allows people to easily follow topics they are interested in (taken from twitter.com). Using hashtags is an integral part of twitter usage. Hashtags allow individuals to search for and join in discussion about specific topics in real time. An example is the #mededchat hashtag that is used every Thursday to bring experts in medical education to discuss previously posted topics on twitter.

Clicking or tapping on a hashtagged word in any message shows you other Tweets that include that hashtag.

People use the hashtag symbol (#) before a relevant keyword or phrase in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets and help them show more easily in Twitter search.Hash tagged words that become very popular are often trending topics.
You cannot add spaces or punctuation in a hashtag, or it will not work properly.
If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet.
We recommend using no more than 2 hashtags per Tweet as best practice, but you may use as many hashtags in a Tweet as you like.

Suggestions from twitter.com

In your twitter search bar type a hash tagged keyword in the search bar to discover content and accounts based on your interests.

How to set up a Twitter account

Summary of HMH policies regarding social media

While social media is easily accessible, careful attention must be given to HMH policies on its use. Their policies apply to team members and all students at the School of Medicine. All members must abide by the HMH code of conduct. Any violations of HIPAA along with discriminatory remarks, sexual harassment and threats of violence may include termination of employee or expulsion of student. No post may contain patient information or proprietary information about HMH. Students specifically are not allowed to engage or communicate with patients. Each individual must conduct themselves in a professional manner online.

If a student is looking to start an HMH or HMSOM associated account, student must seek approval from the Hackensack Meridian Corporate Communications Department and for students, the Senior Associate Dean for Student Affairs and Wellbeing.

Students must also:

Speak in first person and have disclaimer “The views expressed on this (blog, website) are my own personal views and do not reflect the views of my employer (or school)”.
Use a personal email address and not HMH or HMSOM provided email as primary to signup for accounts.
Acquire approval to use any HMSOM logo pictures

Links to HMSOM policies

References

Reames, B. N., Sheetz, K. H., Englesbe, M. J., & Waits, S. A. (2016). Evaluating the use of Twitter to enhance the educational experience of a medical school surgery clerkship. Journal of Surgical Education, 73(1), 73–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2015.08.005
Hennessy, C. M., Kirkpatrick, E., Smith, C. F., & Border, S. (2016). Social Media and anatomy education: Using twitter to enhance the student learning experience in anatomy. Anatomical Sciences Education, 9(6), 505–515. https://doi.org/10.1002/ase.1610
Bramstedt, K. A., Ierna, B. N., & Woodcroft-Brown, V. (2014). Using SurveyMonkey® to teach safe social media strategies to medical students in their clinical years. Communication & Medicine, 11(2), 117-124. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/using-surveymonkey®-teach-safe-social-media/docview/1717303401/se-2?accountid=13793
Radhika Rani Gulati, Helen Reid & Mandeep Gill (2020) Instagram for peer teaching: opportunity and challenge, Education for Primary Care, 31:6, 382-384, DOI: 10.1080/14739879.2020.1811163