[…] •Aim:to improve internal medicine residents’ (IMR) knowledge of correct antimicrobial use and increase their uptake of clinical pathways and order sets through the use of social media. •Methodology: The investigators enrolled 55 IMRs, and asked them to follow the hospital’s antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) on Facebook or Twitter for 6 months. –posted statements on the social media sites promoting the hospital’s ASP website and clinical pathways, focusing on the pathway for community‐acquired pneumonia. –posted and tweeted questions about antimicrobial prescribing. – residents were encouraged to respond, and answers were posted and tweeted by the research team the next business day •Pretest and post‐test surveys were completed by 39 IMRs –median scores for Abx knowledge increased from 12(interquartile range, 8‐13) to 13(interquartile range, 11‐15; P = .048) –IMRsknowing how to access the ASP website increased from 70% to 94%. –More IMRs indicated that they used the clinical pathways"sometimes, frequently, or always" after the intervention (33% vs 61%, P = .004) •Conclusions:Social media is a valuable tool to reinforce ASP initiatives while encouraging the use of ASP resources to promote antimicrobial mindfulness. Social media as a tool for antimicrobial stewardship (Pisano et al., 2016) 48 •These positive results are notable; however, it is possible they were the result of maturation rather than the social media intervention. … Without a control group, it is difficult to sort out maturation effects from intervention effects. •Despite the threat of maturation bias, this study is important because it suggests a relatively simple and inexpensive method for raising awarenessof appropriate antimicrobial prescribing. As the authors point out, it is difficult to draw health care providers’ attention to the prescribing tools that are available to them. Because social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter exist to draw attention to issues, it would seem neglectful not to use them to educate and engage providers about antimicrobial stewardship. •There is no conclusive evidence that social media is effective for improving medical students’ clinical performance. Similarly, there is no solid evidence that social media sites are more or less effective than traditional educational platforms . • However, research has shown that medical students find Twitter and Facebook useful as supplementsto traditional educational strategies. • Practicing physicians and nurse practitioners also find social media acceptable for continuing education. Journal club: Social media as an antimicrobial stewardship tool (Conway & Knighton, 2017) 49 •Given this broad acceptance, could social media be used for other topics in infection control besides ASPs? A study by Pan et al suggest it could be. Pan et al created a hand hygiene promotional video on YouTube and posted linksto it on their hospital website, employee e‐mail list, and Facebook page. •Their results showed that the video was accessed most frequently on social media sites. Fewer than 1% of website and e‐mail subscribers opened the link, but 6% of Facebook subscribers opened it. Similarly, only 12% of total views occurred via the hospital website and e‐mail, whereas...
Type: Media
