Giroux Catherine M, Kim Sungha, Thomas Aliki
School of Physical and Occupational Therapy, McGill University, 3654 prom Sir-William-Osler, H3G 1Y5, Montréal, QC, Canada.
Centre de recherche interdisciplinaire en readaptation (CRIR), Montreal, Canada.
Adv Health Sci Educ Theory Pract. 2025 Feb;30(1):171-194. doi: 10.1007/s10459-024-10338-y. Epub 2024 May 16.
Social media may promote knowledge sharing but what users do with the new knowledge and how it may influence practice remains to be known. This exploratory study used a social constructivist lens to understand how health professions educators and researchers integrate knowledge from social media into their respective practices. We purposively sampled health professions educators and researchers using the hashtags #MedEd, #HPE, and #HealthProfessionsEducation on Twitter/X. We obtained informed consent, conducted interviews via videoconference, and engaged in multiple cycles of deductive and inductive coding and analysis. Participants identified as educators and researchers (n = 12), as researchers (n = 1), or as educators (n = 1) from Canada (n = 8), the United States (n = 3), and Switzerland, Ireland, and China (n = 1, respectively). Eight participants actively used social media (i.e., creating/posting original content); six participants indicated passive use (i.e., reading/retweeting content). They discussed the importance of crafting a consumable message and social media identity to streamline the content shared. Social media's accessible, non-hierarchical nature may facilitate knowledge-sharing, whereas the potential spread of misinformation and technological requirements (e.g., internet access, country-specific restrictions on platforms) present barriers to uptake. Participants described using knowledge gained from social media as teaching tools, new research methodologies, new theoretical frameworks, and low-risk clinical interventions. Previous research has demonstrated how social media has empirically been used for diffusion or dissemination rather than as an active process of evidence uptake. Using knowledge translation frameworks, like the Knowledge to Action or Theoretical Domains frameworks, to inform social media-based knowledge sharing activities in health professions education is recommended.
社交媒体可能会促进知识共享，但用户如何运用新知识以及它可能如何影响实践仍有待了解。这项探索性研究运用社会建构主义视角，以了解卫生专业教育工作者和研究人员如何将社交媒体知识融入各自的实践中。我们通过在推特/X上使用#MedEd、#HPE和#HealthProfessionsEducation等标签，有目的地抽取了卫生专业教育工作者和研究人员作为样本。我们获得了知情同意，通过视频会议进行访谈，并进行了多个回合的演绎和归纳编码与分析。参与者分别来自加拿大（n = 8）、美国（n = 3）以及瑞士、爱尔兰和中国（各n = 1），他们被认定为教育工作者和研究人员（n = 12）、研究人员（n = 1）或教育工作者（n = 1）。八名参与者积极使用社交媒体（即创建/发布原创内容）；六名参与者表示是被动使用（即阅读/转发内容）。他们讨论了精心打造可消费信息和社交媒体身份对于简化共享内容的重要性。社交媒体可访问、非等级化的性质可能有助于知识共享，而错误信息的潜在传播和技术要求（如互联网接入、特定国家对平台的限制）则构成了应用障碍。参与者描述了将从社交媒体获得的知识用作教学工具、新的研究方法、新的理论框架和低风险临床干预措施。先前的研究已经证明社交媒体实际上是如何被用于传播或扩散，而非作为证据应用的积极过程。建议使用知识转化框架，如知识到行动框架或理论领域框架，为卫生专业教育中基于社交媒体的知识共享活动提供指导。
