Monday 14 February 2011

Social Media as a CME tool (response)

Many barriers remain to be resolved before social media find their proper place in prime time in the world of CME. One of these is an inconsistency of attitudes towards social media by health care organizations. While some organizations, particularly academic medical centers, embrace certain media for educational purposes, others have restrictive policies. After all, no one wants their employees Facebooking on the job. Dr RW Donnell http://doctorrw.blogspot.com/2011/02/social-media-as-cme-tool.html
I agree with Brian's comments things are improving, However, there needs to be more than simply adoption of the new technologies to help in the communication of learning in CME. There also needs to be a change in the perspective of those who 'deliver' CME.

Maybe I'm viewing this more from an international perspective than the American one (where the conversation started) but in my mind there are two issues that need to be addressed by stakeholders:

- a move from broadcast media where 'experts' communicate with 'learners'. It is the learners themselves that need to be doing most of the communicating because the hard topics to crack such as patient safety involve the application of knowledge not simply the acquisition of knowledge. In short a move from objectivism to constructivism i.e. away from 'this is what you should do' to 'here is the problem how do you solve it'.

- a change in the notion of control. Instead of the control (the pedagogy of the design) being directed at what is being learnt and when, it should be control through facilitation of learning communities - giving them the support (data, community building, platforms, feedback, experts) that they may need.

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