Primary Cares: A Medical Student Primary Care Facebook Group Heather Paladine, MD hlp11@columbia.edu Prantik Saha, MD Hillary Grubb Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons January 2011

Background I’m co-director of a program at our medical school for students Students continue in the program for all four years of medical school Program includes clinical experiences, mentoring, and a research program Students work with Family Medicine, General Internal Medicine, and General Peds Currently have 12 students total

Background Challenges to primary care student interest: Private medical school (Columbia) emphasizes research and subspecialty care Even with this program, students have long periods of curriculum time without exposure to primary care - especially in the 2nd and 3rd years

Goals of an Online Group Maintain longitudinal presence with students Share information and encourage discussion about primary care Create an online community

Why Facebook? Easy to use - I don’t have the skills to set up or maintain my own program website Free I already had a Facebook account

Setting up the Group I started with only myself as a member Posted some initial discussions to see how they look

Here, you can see my first discussion posts

Next steps I invited the other faculty co-director and made him an administrator also Then invited the students and faculty

Logistical Questions Decided to keep this a private group - only myself and the other admin can accept new members One choice was to make this a group rather than a page - the difference is that a group can restrict membership, while a page is open to the general public Group members can only see the public information of other group members - they are not automatically “friends” with other members

Results Group now has 13 members - 7 out of the 12 students and 6 faculty 9 discussion posts 1 student and 2 other faculty have posted besides myself

Group Members - there are now 13 total

Advantages Facebook set-up was easy Lots of help available both on the site and on the internet Many students and faculty are already Facebook members

Challenges Not every student has joined Some people may be “Facebook resisters” Concerns about privacy How to keep up interest in the group?

Opportunities Try to maintain student interest by putting useful information on the site Use “Events” page to list primary-care related conferences they can attend Post articles related to their research projects Consider opening the Facebook group to other Columbia students interested in primary care (FMIG, Internal Medicine, Peds, student-run free clinics)

Primary Care conference information