Innovations in Educating and Building the Paediatric Theatre Team. The use of Social Media

Abstract

The use of social media around the world has exploded in recent years, with the number of monthly active users of Twitter estimated to be one quarter billion in 2015 and as such is becoming a useful tool for communication and education. 4 It can be a way of asking questions pertinent to medical education, research, clinical practices and guidelines bringing the global medical community together. It enables an immediate exchange of information and ideas around shared areas of interest. Good ideas can be dissipated, allowing amendments of services and quality improvement. Human resource departments and team leaders should be encouraging the use of social media as a productive way of engaging/educating employees and providing positive feedback to teams. Organisations should strive to successfully integrate social media into their internal communications. Twitter feeds provide alternative solutions to tired intranets, message boards and newsletters and keep team members current, up to date and improve team performance.Keywords: Education, Learning, Social Media, Twitter, Surgery TeamworkThe Oxford English dictionary defines a team as "people working together to achieve a common goal". In theatre our common goal is effective collaboration, to deliver evidence based best practice and high quality patient care, in a timely fashion.Team members involved in this process include point of care referral staff (A&E/GP), anaesthetists, surgeons, and nurses. They include staff in recovery and post-operative care environments, including ward-level and ICU settings. Teams must be able to adapt to the changing environment/emergency caseload of an operating theatre, anticipate the needs of other team members, have a shared understanding of the processes, strive for good communication and distribute workload appropriately. 1 With the emergence of evidence supporting of the benefits of multi-disciplinary care and enhanced-recovery it is vital that teams function well, that members feel empowered to speak up and share knowledge in their pursuit of the delivery of the best possible care.Trauma care in particular can create the perfect storm for errors; unstable patients, incomplete histories, time critical decision making, concurrent tasks, MDT involvement and junior personnel out of hours. 2 Teams as a whole are shown to make fewer mistakes than individuals, especially when all team members know both their individual responsibilities as well as those of the other members. One way to improve this is shared MDT training. However, it is challenging to maintain high levels of performance and group training with the frequent turnover of staff due to rotating trainees.Shared learning through social media is one way to connect with different members of the teams and different specialties to gain an appreciation of their role and critical thinking. 1

Exploring the Impact of Social Media Use on Team Feedback and Team Performance in Construction Projects: A Systematic Literature Review

“…The utilization of SM, such as Twitter, has been identified as a useful tool for enhancing communication, education, and positive feedback within teams. This results in improved team performance and engagement [128]. Furthermore, the social network model of construction strengthens professional trust and robust communications, thereby leading to the formation of high-performance project teams [103].…”