Medical journals and societies are trying to figure out ways to use social media to connect with hospitalists and others interested in their subject matter, says Charlie Wray, DO, MS, lead author of a paper proposing a way they can do that: implementing a journal-sponsored club on Twitter.
“At the Journal of Hospital Medicine (JHM), we noticed that there was a large community of hospitalists on Twitter who were looking for a community to engage in hospital medicine topics,” Dr. Wray said. “We created #JHMChat to bring the hospital medicine community together on a regular basis to talk about pertinent research, medical education philosophies, and value-based care interventions. Our ultimate goal was to increase engagement, networking, and communication among this community, while highlighting the work that is being published in JHM.”
A study of #JHMChat showed that social media is a great platform for large organizations to reach out, connect, and create a community around, he added. “We were very surprised by both the Twitter metrics (i.e., number of participants and overall impressions), which showed very large dissemination numbers, in addition to the external dissemination metrics (i.e., page views and altmetrics scores), which showed that each chat basically corresponded to a release of a new issue. This could be informative to other journals as they look for ways to increase their web traffic or disseminate their work to their respective audiences.”
Dr. Wray hopes the study alerts hospitalists to the fact that there is a large and ever-growing community available within social media.
“Second, we know that careers in hospital medicine can be tough, regardless of whether you’re at a community hospital or a large academic center. Knowing that there is a community with which you can connect to is both comforting and reassuring.”
Reference
Wray C et al. The adoption of an online journal club to improve research dissemination and social media engagement among hospitalists. J Hosp Med. 2018 Nov;13(11):764-9.
