Dr Stuart Oultram – Dr Omnia Allam – Rev. Dr David Taylor and Mr Ken Linkman
University of Liverpool
Introduction and Background
Currently, we are living in a fast growing technology dominating era. Strategy makers and practitioner educators are always looking for evidence base information to guide their decisions regarding the use of social media in educational setting Literature shows that the use of social media has created controversial views in the higher education domain with the regard of the impact of using social media on the professional identity of individual students and more widely on the institutes’ public images.
Healthcare education is no exception [1, 2]. Many institutes argue that they employ social media successfully as an educational tool, while others perceive the use of social media in education setting as a potential risk
Aim
This main aim of this paper is to report the on the current state of employing social media as an educational tool in the undergraduate healthcare programmes
Methodology
A systematic search of Midline in the last 15 years, using the MESH terms was conducted as follows: Population: undergraduate healthcare students. Intervention: Social media (and all similar terminology). Outcomes: knowledge, attitude, behaviour, skill, perception (and all similar terminology). After employing the inclusion and the exclusion criteria 443 abstracts resulted. A PRISMA[1] [3] flow chart was used to filter the results, after exclusion for different reasons (explained in the PRISMA) 51 abstract remained.
The 51 Full papers reviewed and ranked using the CASP ranking tool [4].
[1] PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses
Results
Seventeen papers were selected for close review. Using the levels of evidence described by Harden et al [5], Thirteen studies were primary research that fulfilled the criteria for a level 4 study [6, 7, 8, 9,10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]. One [19] was a systematic review of the literature (achieving level 5 status) and three were opinion pieces (level 3) based on expert professional opinion [20, 21, 2], although each of these drew on a research evidence base.
Synthesis of the results so far
Several of the papers discussed the use of Facebook. One discussed the use of YouTube, and five referred principally to Wikis, blogs or bespoke software. There are three main identified reasons for using social media: to increase interaction and engagement, to enhance learning and knowledge sharing and to help build a lasting community. In terms of the way forward, the literature search needs to be extended, looking particularly for evidence for and against the development of the higher level competencies
[1] PRISMA: Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses