The social media revolution in emergency medicine – Has it arrived in Germany yet?

Abstract

Background: The academic use of social media (SoMe) has tremendously increased throughout the last few years, with considerable impact on medical education, structural development of medical programs and professional life of medical staff worldwide. A very specific development is taking place in the realm of emergency medicine (EM), critical care, anaesthesia and others, where connectivism and professional exchange of thoughts and resources have become very intense and productive. This is often referred to as a social media revolution. That, again, is one of the columns of the free open access medical education (foamed) concept: High quality medical educational material is deliberately shared, open to all, and for free. Topics relevant to EM like good quality, or pit crew CPR, or advances in medical teaching and training, as well as initiatives such as “Kids Save Lives”, are introduced, discussed and very effectively disseminated in real time. Popular formats in English are Life In The Fast Lane, and emcrit for example, whereass Perioperative Interactive Education (PIE) is an outstanding, freely accessible resource for the teaching of Point Of Care Ultrasound. Goal: To describe the development and current status of the foamed concept and academic use SoMe in EM in Germany. Discussion: In general, academic use of SoMe does not yet seem to be broadly appreciated, nor is the idea of foamed. On the one hand, professional organs such as the Bundesaerztekammer have already issued general recommendations on “Doctors in Social Media”, suggesting a need for further regulation of an increasing professional use of SoMe. On the other hand, dedicated efforts of clinicians-educators to generate, aggregate, translate and revise foam content in German are successfully beginning to raise awareness for the topic, specifically regarding EM. Thus, SoMe and foamed may become a resource-sparing game changer, especially in EM education here as well.