Teaching an old pain medicine society new tweets: integrating social media into continuing medical education

Abstract

Today, social media has surpassed print newspapers as the primary source of news [1]. In medical education, social media has developed into a tool for disseminating new research findings and learning points from scientific conferences in real time to online audiences throughout the world [2-4]. Social media metrics are increasingly becoming used in academic appointment and promotion portfolios [5]. Twitter in particular has become the social media platform of choice for conference attendees across medical specialties [6-10], and studies show that the majority of tweets generated from conferences are educational [10,11]. The current opioid epidemic represents an opportunity for pain medicine societies to take advantage of social media to promote the latest research and key educational messages from conferences to aid clinicians and patients. However, to date there are no published reports of social media implementation strategies from the field of chronic pain. We therefore provide our experience deliberately integrating Twitter use into the annual fall pain medicine conference hosted by the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) and share strategies used to promote high-quality tweets and drive engagement. This project was granted exemption from review by the Institutional Review Board. ASRA was originally founded in 1923 but dissolved by 1940 when members were encouraged to join the growing American Society of Anesthetists, which eventually became the American Society of Anesthesiologists [12]. The modern ASRA was founded again in 1975, and its current vision is to relieve the global burden of pain (https://www.asra.com/about). We conducted this comparison of Twitter use for the fall 2015 and 2016 annual pain medicine meetings of ASRA since the Society developed a social media strategy in between these two conferences. Free Twitter transcripts were obtained for #ASRAPain15 and #ASRAPain16; these hashtags were registered with Symplur (Pasadena, CA, USA), a healthcare social media analytics company, in advance of each meeting.

Sexual Victimization Among Men: A Qualitative Analysis of the Twitter Hashtag #UsToo

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Current status of pain medicine training in anesthesiology and pain medicine residency programs in university hospitals of Korea: a survey of residents’ opinions

“…Considering the variation in educational environments and each specialty’s characteristics, changes to the educational programs will be needed in the future 14. To provide better opportunities for learning interventional techniques, alternative training methods, including simulation program, bench models, virtual tools, phantom models and live animal models will be needed to improve basic skills 1 15–20. In addition, we suggest that the current PM training goal be changed to reflect the residents’ opinions of low interventional opportunity and more ultrasound block learning.…”