Syndicom

Web 2.0 technologies and collaborative communities: The future of medical education?

One of the health 2.0 bloggers I follow, Bertalan Mesko at ScienceRoll, recently uploaded a presentation on Slideshare– The impact of web 2.0 on medicine and healthcare, demonstrating the difference web 2.0 technologies are making to medical education and medical practice.

One of the main components of this revisioning of medical education involves web based communities, collaboration, continued professional development and the idea of fellowships. When specialists finish their formal medical training, they enter private practice or institutional settings, often with very little ‘real world’ experience. A fellowship program is designed to extend the education of a specialist and focus on such ‘real world’ practices, and expose new practitioners to new instruments, procedures, challenging cases and ongoing mentoring. In spinal surgery, this form of education and professional development is incredibly important, but also challenging when surgeons are separated from engaging in fellowships physically as each program is driven by its faculty training, location and experience.

The UCLA Comprehensive Spine Center fellowship program is one of the leading programs in the country, with 40% of its cases focused on the cervical area and 50% of its cases, degenerative in nature. In the past, fellowship programs had performed their mentoring activities with younger surgeons through email, the phone and sometimes by fax = a time consuming and ultimately frustrating process for all involved. As a result, UCLA Spine Service Chief, Jeffrey Wang began to search for a collaborative platform that would facilitate real time mentoring and feedback for young surgeons from their mentors as well as diversify their training in surgeries, methods and technologies. Aware of the obstacles to such mentoring - physical distances, busy schedules, workloads etc, it was important to Dr Wang to find a platform that would “be a way we could stay connected as a community even if we were located halfway around the world.” He found such a community in SpineConnect. As Dr Wang puts it, ” the cases being discussed on SpineConnect are the really interesting, complex cases. It has become a great source for ‘teaching cases’ in our fellowship program”. Not only that, but SpineConnect has reinforced ‘fellowship’ (as in the quality or state of being comradely) among the fellows as it facilitates more effective and regular communication, opportunities for collaboration, and as a result, better patient care. UCLA now has its own group within the SpineConnect community, with former and current fellows collaborating with faculty. The community is able to interact on a daily basis across space, fostering a sense of belonging and trust, as they support each other in professional practice and their quest for advanced medical education. Wouldn’t YOU want to be part of something like that?

With many thanks to Victor Castilla from web2.0 and medicine for the amazing image!

Kirsten Broadfoot