A well-known communication and business speaker, Erik Qualman, said ‘we don't have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it’.
I think Erik could not be more spot on, because the truth of today’s society is if you’re not on social media you’re getting left behind. Whilst selling products/services through these powerful gateways is extremely complex and takes skill, (which I have not developed considered my extremely low follow count and boring holiday snaps).
Today I will focus on the aspect of social media that majority of society are experts at, consuming.
Social media has slowly etched its way into almost every aspect of our lives. Whether it is choosing what to wear or where to eat or how we spend our free time digesting entertainment or news, it is significantly determined by the platforms and pages we choose click/like/follow/tweet/hashtag (or whatever other verb young people use these days).
This influence has well and truly extended into education and personal development. As physiotherapists (and other similar health professionals) are often type-A personalities, that are extremely enthusiastic about their jobs it is natural that sharing content through these vast reaching platforms was bound to become popular.
Education through following certain social media pages, people and profiles is a fantastic way to keep up to date with current research and enhance your own knowledge.
It is impossible to read every new piece of research that is published or be up to date with every consensus statement that is developed. These social cyberspaces are a convenient way to maximise the amount of new relevant content you are able to absorb. But (I’m sure everyone predicted a ‘but’ following that sentence) there are many pitfalls to using this form of personal development that although might seem obvious can be easy to fall into. One thing that rings true with social media in any form is the fact that any content is deliberate.
No tweet or photo or caption appears accidentally.
People posting can choose to post whatever they want (and to leave out whatever information suits). As long as it is not risqué enough to get reported by your easily offended neighbour then it stays in cyberspace for everyone (or no one) to view.
What this means in an educational sense is a professional can post details of a new trial published that shows great effect for the intervention that they are already a big fan of; all the while ignoring the paper refuting that finding or supporting an intervention they have explicated stated is bollocks (British slang I’ve adopted with my time over here).
Social media, just as real life, is prone to biases and driven by individual’s motivation, whatever form that takes.
Below is a list of my 5 tips for how I maximise my educational experience on social media (when I’m not watching videos of people falling off surfboards)
1. Use a filter
Filter the pages or people you follow so you can properly absorb what you need from posts.
Don’t do what I and so many young physiotherapists have tried to do and follow every clinical page/group/account in existence thinking that there is always something you are missing out on (the concept we have termed knowledge envy.
Every undergraduate has felt at one point when a friend mentions a concept or term you have never heard of in your life).
Too much information can dampen the impact of good information. Living in a tech world as we are there is a constant bombardment of information and are brains can get a bit frazzled at times without us even acknowledging it. Dwindle down the clinical social media accounts you follow to people/pages that add value to your personal development. A good start in filtering out pages which I have done is unfollowing people who are consistently negative. Criticism is a good thing in our industry and the ability to critique what is considered normal or question long accepted practices is vital to developing (see point 3 below). However, there is a difference between being constructively critical of others practice and outright negativity. Many popular social media pages have a tendency to self-promotion through the form of putting down other clinicians or making bold absolute statements such as ‘never do this’ or ‘this is bad practice’, without understanding the context or clinical reasoning of those individuals.
Being scrutinised by external parties is part of any role within a professional sporting environment, but often this can be somewhat frustrating when others don’t understand the clinical reasoning or context of certain decisions and management strategies. Best practice of utilising social media in my opinion constitutes being positively critical and encouraging clinical discussion that can promote clinician’s ability to reason through their daily caseload. This belief of mine greatly influences the people and groups I choose to follow and derive my social media professional education from.
2. Absorb don’t just ‘like’
Another behaviour or habit that I have been guilty of in the past is thinking that if I follow a lot of pages and flick past their posts that automatically will result in upskilling – wrong! The amount of information your brain is attempting to process when rapidly scrolling Instagram is large and hence why it often feels ‘mind numbing’ to do so – this doesn’t promote the best environment to actually increase clinical knowledge.
My advice is to use the old 2-button screen shot function for something worthwhile for once and not just to take embarrassing snaps of your friends snapchat videos. When scrolling your socials if a post seems interesting or informative take a screen shot and save it for later. Then once a week or fortnight block out some time in your diary for self-education where proper reflection and critiquing of information can take place. This includes actually reading the articles that are referenced in these posts and not just skimming the abstracts.
This will allow you the learning affect to be greatly enhanced and decide for yourself the applicability to your clinical environment.
3. Be critical (constructively)
Carrying on from the last point, equally as important to absorbing the information is being critical of it. Just because someone with 100k followers posts something does not make it ‘factual’. And equally if a post comes from an individual who may not be your cup of tea doesn’t mean that there isn’t valuable insight to gain from that particular opinion. This highlights the importance of being critical of information we take in and not just believing things we read even when that claim is referenced (very interesting video from Michael Shermer regarding detecting ‘baloney’ in people’s claims). Delve into interesting posts that you come across by critiquing the referenced articles or discussing further with colleagues and even researching other papers on the topic that might not be referenced because they refute that persons claim.
There are a multitude of clinical reasoning models and treatment approach styles and no matter what you think is the correct way, there is always someone who will disagree. Be open to change but also critical of what information you allow to influence your practice. It is a fine balance of being open minded and not too convincible while maintaining confidence in your belief but not overly stubborn. It is the approach I have seen all the best clinicians in our industry adopt to consistently improve their clinical skills and perfectly applies to consuming social media information.
4. Try for yourself
Remember the triad of evidence-based practice during that super engaging subject back in undergraduate level! One of the important parts of being an effective clinician is bringing your clinical expertise – so to have expertise you need to try things. Use your own experiences to gage the effectiveness of diagnostic and management concepts that you have gained from proper critical absorption of social media information.
An example is if a respected clinician posts an Instagram video a different version of an ankle taping that they report gives increased stability to patients suffering from recurrent ankle sprains. The taping to you seems valid and fits in to your model of management and doing your research you are aware there isn’t any best evidence available to indicate a type of ankle taping over another. So, your next patient with ankle ligament laxity you explain to them you have been shown this new version of taping and want to try it and they can give you feedback on their thought on using it for their sport. This is a perfectly reasonable way to carry out the process of new information from social media into your clinical practice in an ethical, evidence-based approach.
A strategy I always employ with the athletes I deal with is the 3-try rule for new exercises. Any new exercise I observe from social media or colleague I try myself in the gym 3 different sessions with differing variable (speed, load, range etc.) before prescribing to my athletes. They know that I have this rule so not only does it increase my ability to understand the sensory feedback and effectively use cue to alter their motor output; it also increases compliance with the players knowing that if their uncoordinated physio can do it they better be able to as well.
Obviously we all follow the Hippocratic oath, primum non nocere,, or ‘first do no harm’. If you have properly critiqued information and decided the specific tool, skill, management strategy holds clinical validity and wont harm the patient then try it out and see your results for yourself.
5. Social(ising) media
· It is called ‘social’ media for a reason. Although it has now morphed into a lot of advertising and celebrities bragging about how rich they are, the original purpose of these platforms were for people to communicate with each other. So don’t hesitate to tweet or ‘slide into the DMs’ of clinicians or colleagues to have clinical discussions.
Although messaging Ed Sheeran on insta is unlikely to yield a direct response you are a much better chance of having a conversation with a fellow physiotherapist which can only serve to enhance your knowledge and grow your network within our industry. More than likely the type of people who put themselves out there by posting ideas or opinions are the personalities more than willing to discuss and respond to questions.
Thanks for reading guys and I hope this has given some helpful tips on consuming social media information for the purpose of improving your clinical practice.
As mentioned above regarding reaching out to other clinicians both Dave and I are more than happy to respond to questions or queries or have clinical discussions with like-minded individuals.
Enjoy your day!