Social Media: Social Intelligence Training Module

INTRODUCTION: Physicians’ posts on social media have the potential to impact the patient-physician relationship, interpersonal relationships at work, institutions’ reputations, and the public's trust in health care professionals. Empirical research, along with several very public cases of unprofessional behavior by physicians on social media, suggests that resident physicians are not always aware of the implications of their actions online. Residency programs are being charged with ways to model positive online presence. The goal of this project was to develop a social media training program that emphasized perspective taking and fostered appropriate social media use. METHODS: This training program involves an interactive lecture and discussion, with approximately 20 minutes of content, 20 minutes of small-group discussion, and 10 minutes of large-group discussion. We evaluated the effectiveness of this program by asking participants to complete presession and postsession surveys of social media knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. RESULTS: Survey responses (N = 16) suggest that the social media training program was successful. Participants demonstrated an increase in knowledge of social media policies, ability to identify potentially inappropriate media interactions, ability to identify appropriate responses to such interactions, and understanding of how their actions on social media affect others. DISCUSSION: We believe that the social media module is an effective and useful tool for members of the medical community as the internet and social media continue to grow in popularity and lines between professional and personal realms are continually blurred. While the effectiveness of this program was established with first-year pediatric residents, the module material is applicable to a broader medical audience.