Omar Ghanem, MD1, Benjamin V Tran, BS2, Desmond Huyhn, MD3, Brian Jacob, MD, FACS2. 1Department of Surgery, Mosaic Life Care, St. Joseph MO, 2Department of Surgery, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, 3Department of Surgery, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Introduction: The collaboration of medical and surgical professionals on social media continues to thrive. The International Hernia Collaboration (IHC), a closed Facebook™ group (FB) started in 2012, has provided the proof of concept necessary to demonstrate a novel way to obtain immediate global transparent feedback, provide surgical education, and to help optimize patient outcomes. Until now, CME credits were not available to participants embracing closed Facebook groups. With over 4300 members in the IHC, to test if CME credit offering was feasible, the group set up a pilot series of live lectures followed by a novel pathway offering CME credit.
Materials and Methods: Four guest lecturers within the IHC were invited, one each month over 4 months, to post an hour-long lecture followed the next day by a Facebook™ live session (Q&A format). Between the 2nd and 3rd lecture series, we obtained certification from Cinemed™ to offer CME. Participation from IHC members was measured based on activity metrics available through Facebook including views, comments, and likes. Following the live session, members could claim CME credit by accessing a link with a simple two question quiz confirming the viewing and understanding of the lecture material.
Results: There were an average of 1,146 (26.8 +/- 4.0 %) views of the live session events following each lecture. While each view may not represent a unique user, this number reflects 25% of the total membership. The average view count for a random post not related to this pilot series is under 500. A Facebook Engagement score, defined as [(the number of comments*2) + (the number of reactions)], was calculated for each of the live sessions with a mean score of 255 +/- 75. This was found to be significantly different from the mean Facebook Engagement score of all posts on the IHC, 40.8 (p < .001). The Facebook Engagement score per group use and viewer use was 5.6% and 22.3%, respectively. On average, 20 users [range 18-22 (n=2 events)] claimed CME credit for each of these pilot educational series.
Conclusion: Social media, closed FB groups specifically, offers an effective educational platform for medical and surgical professionals. The pilot IHC Lecture and Live Discussion Series offering CME credit resulted in a significantly more robust engagement amongst its members. We successfully showed that the ability to offer CME credit for participation in closed Facebook™ group discussions is feasible. Further dissemination of this novel capability is recommended.
Presented at the SAGES 2017 Annual Meeting in Houston, TX.
Abstract ID: 86819
Program Number: S080
Presentation Session: MIS Education Session
Presentation Type: Podium