Using Twitter to teach Public Health to undergraduate medical students - #fluscenario Dr Ellie Hothersall Theme Lead for Public Health Deputy Convenor Systems in Practice Locum Consultant in Public Health

The challenge Public Health is “common sense” Easy Concepts rather than facts Hard to assess Difficult to get engagement from majority

The solution? Get ‘em while they’re young Try to develop conversations not teach facts Make it relevant and engaging

#fluscenario Online Done in Private Study Using familiar social media Low input required from staff Peer support

Origins of #fluscenario Based on previous work by nhssm.org Original scenarios written by Mr Alex Talbott and Dr Chloe Sellwood Twitter chat with Social Media emphasis Easy to tweak to student focus We gave the option of using Twitter or a secure blog or for responding

Purpose of #fluscenario To introduce you to pandemic ‘flu and emergency planning To develop an online learning conversation (To understand there is more to public health than drinking water and inequalities) (To understand how social media will influence your professional life)

Outline Phase 1 Background Preparation Phase 2 Early outbreak Communication and risk Phase 3 Late outbreak Prevention and mitigation Phase 4 Wrap up Lessons learned

Outline Phase 1 Background Preparation Phase 2 Early outbreak Communication and risk Phase 3 Late outbreak Prevention and mitigation Phase 4 Wrap up Lessons learned

Background/Early warning Assumptions in planning (e.g. 50% affected, 4% hospitalised) Link to early BBC coverage: Spread internationally: m m Questions for discussion e.g. What could you be doing now to get ready?

Outline Phase 1 Background Preparation Phase 2 Early outbreak Communication and risk Phase 3 Late outbreak Prevention and mitigation Phase 4 Wrap up Lessons learned

Outline Phase 1 Background Preparation Phase 2 Early outbreak Communication and risk Phase 3 Late outbreak Prevention and mitigation Phase 4 Wrap up Lessons learned

Outline Phase 1 Background Preparation Phase 2 Early outbreak Communication and risk Phase 3 Late outbreak Prevention and mitigation Phase 4 Wrap up Lessons learned

What happened? 2,987 Tweets using the hashtag #fluscenario Contributions from staff, students, others Mean number of Tweets per student was 13.8 (range 1-88). Peak Twitter activity was in the first 12 hours, with >1,000 Tweets within 8 hours of launching the first scenario.

Evaluation “did not understand the point of the exercise” “waste of time” “I enjoyed using twitter as a new way of teaching and I feel like I learnt a lot from the opportunity to discuss the flu scenario with my peers.”

“Whooping cough: Three more babies die in outbreak #fluscenario” “Reading about the emergence of multidrug- resistant TB and automatically relating this to the spread of #fluscenario. Hello Library Weekends.”

View from the outside

Next time? Better evaluation Build ethics and communications in specifically Ask students to identify key learning points Get the students using Twitter earlier to “win them over” (e.g. #dundeeprn) PLUS content/context analysis of tweets

Get involved! Next run will be November 2013