Laura Ebbitt, BCCCP, PharmD
Surgical Clinical Pharmacist
University of Kentucky College of Medicine
Lexington, Kentucky
Disclosure information not submitted.
Brittany Bissell, BCCCP, PharmD, PhD
Clinical Pharmacist
University of Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky
Disclosure information not submitted.
Komal Pandya, PharmD, BCCCP
Clinical Pharmacist
UK HealthCare, Kentucky, United States
Disclosure information not submitted.
Sara Parli, PharmD, BCCCP
Disclosure information not submitted.
Title: Utilization of Social Media to Facilitate Critical Care Residency Education
Introduction: In recent years, social media has become more integrated into the medical community. It allows publications to be easily shared, practitioners to collaborate, and learners to share their experiences and thoughts. There are myriad benefits that may be observed from increased visibility of resident research projects and publications, to sharing pearls from core topics; all while also giving an inside view to the residency program. With the COVID19 pandemic, our institution developed a guideline of creative ways to involve our PGY2 Pharmacy Critical Care Residents with our Twitter account (@UKCritCarePharm) to highlight their work and to allow them additional conversations with colleagues across the nation.
Methods: This is a comparison of Twitter engagement pre- and post- Twitter guideline changes within the Critical Care Residency program. Tweets across both time frames highlighted publications and events residents may be involved in. In the new guidelines, residents were asked to provide weekly pearls from their Critical Care Conference and preceptors were also highlighted monthly. These pearls could be a manuscript or infographic they found particularly helpful, something they found particularly interesting, or additional questions they may have.
Results: Prior to the new Twitter guideline implementation, engagement averaged at 9,850 engagements per month with an average of 5 Tweets per month. With the new guideline, engagement increased to 44,900 per month with 16 tweets per month. This also resulted in increasing the average number of followers from 20 to 68 per month. Perceptions from the residents were positive regarding the experience and gave additional opportunities to interact with colleagues outside of the institution.
Conclusions: These results demonstrate that by incorporating Twitter, residents are able to highlight their learnings and publications to a larger group of people and engage learners and clinical pharmacists from around the country. With the COVID19 pandemic in full swing during the residency year, it also allowed our residents increased visibility and interactions that were otherwise somewhat limited. Incorporating Twitter into the Critical Care Pharmacy Residency was a positive experience and will be continued through the following residency years.