Zucker Benjamin E, Kontovounisios Christos
Imperial College London, School of Medicine, London, UK.
Department of Surgery and Cancer, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Imperial College London NHS Trust, London, UK.
Adv Med Educ Pract. 2018 Mar 28;9:203-205. doi: 10.2147/AMEP.S155398. eCollection 2018.
The ubiquitous nature of social media has meant that its effects on fields outside of social communication have begun to be felt. The generation undergoing medical education are of the generation referred to as "digital natives", and as such routinely incorporate social media into their education. Social media's incorporation into medical education includes its use as a platform to distribute information to the public ("distributive education") and as a platform to provide information to a specific audience ("push education"). These functions have proved beneficial in many regards, such as enabling constant access to the subject matter, other learners, and educators. However, the usefulness of using social media as part of medical education is limited by the vast quantities of poor quality information and the time required to find information of sufficient quality and relevance, a problem confounded by many student's preoccupation with "efficient" learning. In this Perspective, the authors discuss whether social media has proved useful as a tool for medical education. The current growth in the use of social media as a tool for medical education seems to be principally supported by students' desire for efficient learning rather than by the efficacy of social media as a resource for medical education. Therefore, improvements in the quality of information required to maximize the impact of social media as a tool for medical education are required. Suggested improvements include an increase in the amount of educational content distributed on social media produced by academic institutions, such as universities and journals.
社交媒体无处不在，这意味着它对社会交流之外领域的影响已开始显现。接受医学教育的这一代人属于所谓的“数字原生代”，因此他们经常将社交媒体融入自己的教育之中。社交媒体融入医学教育的方式包括将其用作向公众传播信息的平台（“传播式教育”）以及向特定受众提供信息的平台（“推送式教育”）。这些功能在很多方面都已证明是有益的，比如能让人持续获取学习内容、接触其他学习者和教育工作者。然而，将社交媒体用作医学教育的一部分，其效用受到大量低质量信息以及查找足够高质量和相关信息所需时间的限制，许多学生专注于“高效”学习使这个问题变得更为复杂。在这篇观点文章中，作者们探讨了社交媒体作为医学教育工具是否已证明有用。当前将社交媒体用作医学教育工具的增长趋势，似乎主要是受学生对高效学习的渴望推动，而非社交媒体作为医学教育资源的功效。因此，需要提高信息质量，以最大限度发挥社交媒体作为医学教育工具的作用。建议的改进措施包括增加由学术机构（如大学和期刊）在社交媒体上发布的教育内容数量。
