How Facebook is changing medical learning

Still in the medical environment to say that Facebook(FB) is changing learning in Medicine could put you in a weak position. Books, journals, or Database are well accepted as a source of medical information. But FB is associated with young people enjoying life, nice pictures from a holiday, but I believe that FB is a strong tool for improving in Medicine and these are the reasons why…..

REASON 1: most of medical journals send information, even free articles, to FB as a way to attract people to the whole journal. Sometime in a “quizz” format you learn more and faster that in the classical way. The New England Journal, JAMA , and many others, are active in FB and twitter, another useful tool.

REASON 2: FB connect groups of people with similar interest all around the world. Initially developed for the anglosaxon world is now a wonderful tool for all the countries and languages around the planet. For instance in spanish one direction, “Elrincondelamedicinainterna” (the internal medicine corner) based in an small town in Argentine, Azul, has more than 30.000 “friends” people who follow clinical cases from all around Europe and South America, something imposible not to long ago.

REASON 3: FB can improve your medical performance because is “visual based” and this is a key aspects of Medicine. Also is a path to improve because you can select, preserving confidentiality, clinical cases, situations, signs or symptoms from your own daily practice and to share them with your colleagues around the world.

There are, for sure, more reasons. Then, next time when someone speakes about FB and Medicine don,t laugh, just learn.

Author: Lorenzo Alonso