Facebook is an online
social networking service. Users can create a personal profile, add other users
as friends, exchange messages, post status updates and photos, and receive
notifications when others update their profiles. As of the first quarter
2014, Facebook had 1.28 billion monthly active users (Statista, 2014).
I have a personal page
on this social networking tool, and I have derived so much fun networking with
people from all over the world. I have even used Facebook to connect with
classmates I went to secondary school with last seen over 30 years ago! That
being said, I have observed businesses, politicians, churches, and various
entities promote their agendas on Facebook. Thus I ask myself "What stops
us as nurses from using Facebook to teach and learn?" The answer, is that
we are only limited to what we ourselves limit ourselves to.
Facebook’s influence on
the 21st century, as well as the phenomenal growth of other social
media technologies such as Twitter, heralds a new reality for health care
professions. In three mini-courses on using social media at Penn State Hershey
Medical Center, 15 participants including doctors, nurses, social workers,
informational technology personnel, medical and nursing students, and health
researchers undertook courses sponsored by their department of human resources
called “Friending Facebook?” to encourage conversations on integration of
social media in medicine. The feedback from the course, relayed that
“friending” patients and inviting them into one’s personal network was
uniformly resisted, but strategically “friending” colleagues and support groups
was most useful for professional growth (George, 2011).
“As educational tools,
social media allow patients, caregivers and providers to access some of the
most up-to-date materials related to health care issues. This information can
come in the form of videos, blogs, tweets, websites, and Facebook pages”
(Rutledge et al., 2011).
I would integrate the
use of Facebook with teaching individual courses by registering an account
under an agreed group name with my students. Then I would have them register
individual accounts separate from any existing accounts, and then request
friendship from me. We will then be linked as a closed group accessible to only
us, and strictly to discuss and share ideas about the particular course in question.
I would use surveymonkey.com as a summative evaluation tool and email it to my
students for feedback.
References
George,
D. R. (2011). 'Friending Facebook?' A minicourse on the use of social media by
health professionals. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health
Professions, 31(3), 215-219. doi:10.1002/chp.20129
Rutledge,
C. M., Renaud, M., Shepherd, L., Bordelon, M., Haney, T., Gregory, D., &
Ayers, P. (2011). Educating Advanced Practice Nurses in Using Social Media in
Rural Health Care. International Journal of Nursing Education
Scholarship, 8(1), 1-14. doi:10.2202/1548-923X.2241
Statista.
(2014). The statistics portal: Number of monthly active Facebook users
worldwide from 3rd quarter 2008 to 2nd quarter 2014 (in millions). Retrieved from
http://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/
