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Social Media, Technology, and Education in the ICU
Richard H. Savel, MD, FCCM
Objectives
- To become familiar with the various forms of social networking
- To be introduced to the ways in which social networking can be used to coordinate with national and international medical societies
- To become familiar with the advances that have occurred in handheld and tablet technology, and what apps are of value to the critical care practitioner
Key words: social media, education, Twitter, Facebook, iPad, technology
The Wikipedia defines social media as Web-based and mobile-based technologies that are used to turn communication into interactive dialogues among individuals, organizations, and communities. Some examples of social media include magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, microblogging, wikis, and podcasts. The focus of this chapter is social networking. After reading this chapter, the reader should understand the basics of the mainstream social networking sites, how they work, what kind of a presence critical care societies have on these sites, and how these sites can be used as a resource to interact with national and international medical societies. In addition, the chapter describes how these instruments can serve as an educational resource for you, your patients, and their families and how your institution can use social media for marketing purposes. This chapter concludes with a discussion of new handheld technology in the ICU, specifically focusing on recent developments in tablet computing (iPads) and how these devices can be used in the ICU.
The concept of Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) is a simple one but one that has caught on to a great degree, with the most recent statistics revealing more than 900 million active users.
As was depicted in the 2010 movie The Social Network, Facebook (then known as TheFacebook) was started in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg out of his Harvard dormitory room. Each user starts by signing up for a Facebook account (for free) and then enters information such as real name, gender, birthday, relationship status, and educational and work history. Once you have done that, you then start finding “friends.” Type the names of people you know into the search bar, and when you find them, send them a friend request. Given the number of people using the site, it is not difficult to find friends online. Once you start collecting friends, you can see their list of friends and ask them to be your friends. Your friend list can quickly grow.
Once one has set up the account and started to get some friends, there are some other key concepts to understand. One is called the “news feed.” On this area, the user can see the “status updates” that people have input about themselves. A status update is a place where you can write “what is on your mind” and can be anything you as a user want. It can be plain text only or can include photos, links to favorite Web sites, and other media content. Uploading and sharing photos on Facebook has become one of the most popular activities on the site, and Facebook has become the number one photo-sharing site in the world. The newsfeed can become quite hectic with all the comments from your friends. Fortunately, Facebook has developed a series of adjustments that can be made to the newsfeed to customize exactly who is seen on the newsfeed stream and what kind of information will make it to the newsfeed.
Two other important areas of discussion relating to Facebook are concerns regarding privacy and use of the “like” function. The “like” function is relatively straightforward to understand. If you like something you see (a status update, a comment, a picture, a link), then you can “like” that piece of commentary. Your friends will receive a notification that you “liked” something, and their attention will be drawn to that particular item.
In terms of privacy settings, Facebook has greatly improved over the years in empowering users to customize their settings in terms of who can see what content as well as other features, such as “tagging” photos. When someone posts a picture, and if you happen to be in it, that person can “tag” you and link that photo to your account. This may not be something you want, and this feature (and ones like it) can be blocked from within the privacy settings.
Organizations (not just individuals) can have Facebook pages. The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) has a Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/SCCM1), which currently has more than 9,500 “likes” (meaning that it is attached to other people’s pages and they are notified of its updates). By viewing this page, you can see important updates from SCCM, as well as pictures and other media, and can even interact with the leadership of the society itself.
One last comment regarding Facebook: this Web site supports itself with context-related advertising that can be seen on the right-hand side of the screen. This is how Facebook makes the preponderance of its money. If you “like” one of those advertisements, your friends are notified of that as well. The concept is to take advantage of “word of mouth” advertising by using social networking.
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