Social Media Being Taught at More Medical and Nursing Schools

Dale Wolf | Jul 15, 2009 | 0 comments

Nurse using computerThe Journal of the Medical Library Association, Healthcare IT News reports on a study that indicates social networking tools are rapidly being added to the curricula in medical and nursing school. It should be noted that the study included a fairly small sampling and results may be non-projectable. We include this, however, because based on our experience (see last paragraphs of this posting), social media are gaining momentum.

Hopefully, this will be a trend because physicians, nurses and hospital administrators will gain by expanding their view of professional and patient discussions that should serve to improve care at lower cost.

The study cited:

  • 53% of nursing schools and 45% of medical schools include Web 2.0 tools in their curricula.
  • 58% of nursing schools plan to implement social networking tools in their curricula in the upcoming year, compared with 50% of medical schools.

Although a larger percentage of nursing schools report using or planning to use Web 2.0 tools in their curricula than medical schools, medical school respondents were more likely to report personal use of social networking tools than nursing school respondents.

Student, Practitioner Demand

A separate survey conducted in 2007 found that medical students and practitioners want more training to become better users of Web 2.0 tools.

Compass Clinical Consulting Using Social Media

Compass Clinical Consulting’s decision to reach out to the healthcare community through social media fits in with a growing trend of medical and nursing schools who are now teaching students how to be proficient in using social media.

Visit our website, our social media news room and our growing list of blogs and links to our Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, StumbleUpon, and other social media.

Over 300 hospitals are now following us on Twitter and in just three months nearly 20,000 pages have been viewed on our blogs.

The goal is to become an integral participant in the discussions that impact reducing the cost of delivering safe, quality healthcare.

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About the Author

From sports journalist to editor of an international trade magazine to Marketing Director for 3 companies before founding WBK Marketing, eventually one of the 50 largest promotional marketing agencies in America. Dale has pioneered "contextual marketing" for successful brands at P&G, Pepsi, Disney, Toshiba, Compaq, Imation, 3M and many regional hospitals and healthcare insurers. “From my days in college as a pre-med student and working as a transporter for Christ Hospital in Cincinnati, to developing marketing programs for hospitals and health insurers, I have always had a passion for how science and medicine can help bring sick people back to health. Hospitals are incredibly complex organizations, with two large clinical teams (doctors and nurses) and many highly skilled specialists and therapists. There are times when various groups working in medical centers have opposing view points that can lead to dissonance, which at the extreme can potentially impair patient safety and quality outcomes. The work we do at Compass Clinical Consulting guides many of these hospitals through contentious issues, process failure or breakdown with a negative impact on financial stability. Our department of education and information services has been assembled to produce high-value content for hospital leaders. Our goal is to help these leaders transform their organizations into better hospitals by reducing the cost of delivering safe, quality healthcare.” Dale has been an active blogger since 2004 when he launched The Perfect Customer Experience (www.perfectcem.com); recently recognized as one of Top 20 CRM blogs and on healthcare improvement (www.better-hospitals.com) where we now communicate about issues that impact making better American hospitals.

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