S. B. Bryczkowski1, A. L. Cochran2, N. J. Gusani3, C. Jones4, L. S. Kao5, B. C. Nwomeh6, M. E. Zenilman7 1New Jersey Medical School,Surgery/Rutgers,Newark, NJ, USA 2University Of Utah,Surgery,Salt Lake City, UT, USA 3Penn State Hershey Medical Center,Surgery,York, PA, USA 4Ohio State University,Trauma/Surgery,Columbus, OH, USA 5University Of Texas Health Science Center At Houston,Surgery,Houston, TX, USA 6Ohio State University,Pediatric Surgery,Columbus, OH, USA 7Johns Hopkins University School Of Medicine,Surgery,Baltimore, MD, USA
Introduction: Physician use of social media is becoming more common. Twitter-based journal clubs (JC) are effective, feasible venues for discussing high-impact articles. The purpose of the study was to describe the authors’ experience starting the Twitter-based JC, the International General Surgery Journal Club (IGSJC).
Methods: Monthly 2-3 day Twitter JCs were scheduled to discuss recent JAMA Surgery articles. The IGSJC executive committee moderated discussions among authors, followers, and Twitter participants. Descriptive analyses of Twitter transcripts were done. IGSJC followers and Tweets including the #IGSJC hashtag identified participants. The primary outcomes were number and profession of participants, transcript themes, and article downloads.
Results: During the first 12 months of JCs (March 2014 – March 2015), 514 participants from 69 countries tweeted 4,574 times creating 7,085,470 impressions. IGSJC transcript analyses revealed three themes: discussion of articles, physician education, and patient advocacy. There were 5,915 HTML views and PDF downloads combined for the first quarter.
Conclusion: A Twitter-based JC for general surgeons is feasible and surgeons are interested. The IGSJC is dynamic, allowing real-time conversations. The asynchronous design allows international involvement, making it superior to standard JCs. Future potential to communicate new surgical data and offer continuing medical education needs to be explored.
