This blog post is sponsored by Semantix Ltd.

We often ask ourselves, why do certain organizations choose to embrace or completely reject social media? For those who use social media everyday for every little part of their lives, its easy to argue that its completely relevant and people should give it a chance and embrace it. I obviously fall into this category – guilty as charged!

But after conducting research in various public sectors, I’ve learnt that there are very real challenges in adopting social media and taking that step can be a really big one for certain organizations. This blog post looks into those perceptions, both good and bad of why people want to resist or embrace social media within the medical e-learning environment within the NHS trust.

Medical Professionals perceptions & challenges

• “Trainees and students have been annoyed not being able to collaborate with other people in the Trust.

• “There is a strange relationship between the trust and postgraduate. How does it fit it and the Trust needs to pick up on the ongoing cost.”

• “We need to give access to social networks because its how people network.”

• “From education point of view  – there are undergraduate committees, if you give them a paper, they would say this is totally useless, we want honest feedback from them. If there was an anonymous feedback system on the website then its honest.”

• “Undergraduates are used to is having a link to their calendar. Lectures come up on their calendar. Try to setup something like that on the site. Google calendar. They can download to their phones or iPods. I can’t go onto the network from the phone. Trust should support cost if there is a need for it.”

• “One of the worries, the informal e-learning that is already out there, the concern is the solution to the problem that we have, is that the trainees can’t access it because its been block. We need to have conversations about how we can provide this access.”

• “They ask practical questions. I think they need that networking like Facebook where they can actually do it. How we give access to them and how we are going to do that is what we are concerned about.”

• “Moderated site – the problem is about access. People had to go home to their own computers at home and not on site. As a trainee, you are risking having less honest conversation.”

• “What we would like to go on the website, is teaching programs. The postgraduate have teaching programs that would be good to have on the website.“

• “If we want to push the teaching program through the calendars, then we should do that. Then we can go the trainees to go on that. About linking in the phone, that is already available within the NHS.”

• “We need to marry an IT environment and what is a university, academic requirement where there are issues around security and capability. Suggest the academic requirement should be separated form the business/patient network environment.”

• “The priority from IT is about the patient not about the teaching. Who is the customer? The patient, not the academic.“

• “Significant IT infrastructure issues about clinical data about opening up networking sites and undergraduates.”

• “It’s not about having a separate network. What would be nice is to provide patients with access around security.”

• “You can setup Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN) – not mature yet. It is how it is being setup in the county. And hopefully the NHS will move towards that model. (Oxford example) VLAN would mark public access or private access. It allows you to see within the environment and has gateways to JANET or a direct connection. It’s all about cost for these things to happen. We don’t have the money. Its going to cost money. We need to come toward some sort of compromise.”

• “VLE was used after it was initiated by the nursing staff. Moodle was just recently used. It’s because of the VLE that triggered this. We did plug the VLE project into the prioritisation and turned out in the quadrant as a ‘don’t do’. Looking at everything we want to do and which is being prioritised. When we talk about a Deanery with a certain budget, you can try what you want.  The trust has got to give the approval.”

Learner’s perceptions & challenges

• “There’s no time to collaborate, you have no time to sit at the computer and do these things.  You call your friend then your friend tells you to look on the forum because they’ve seen it there.”

• “It could also be used to notify another doctor that a patient prefers to see another doctor. And seize opportunities.”

• “Lots of people don’t open their email. I open, read, close it, that’s it. When you get sent group emails, every single person gets the email like form Kings College, it’s irrelevant. Everybody puts together a list of people who doesn’t get onto the list just gets lost.”

• “There’s a problem with Trust. Some of us in the beginning still didn’t logon to the network because its so difficult.  And you have your own email address. There’s a problem with accessibility. You have to spend 15 minutes to talk to them to rectify the problem.”

• “Work with a system of somebody who gives you formal certificate and done teaching basically. With facility for feedback and reflection and having targeted resources for different grades and levels of people. Probably a module that is more difficult and effective so learners might be a risk for an employer to see how you’re doing.”

• “You don’t want somebody getting frustrated and a little usability testing would be good.”

• “You get a variety of answers, there’s no way or how strong the evidence is. You might be completely wrong. I’ve never found forums, I find its easier to call your mate.”

• “Sometimes I do look at forums to get piece of mind seeing other people’s problem. And not really there to learn.”

• “I never use blogs too.”

• “Doctors don’t have time to look into informal learning’s because they have to look into the formal learning.”

• “How bout stuff like leadership, communication and stuff you don’t get taught? How do you know what’s going on in a different trust?”

• “My perception on blogging is people’s experience are different from each other. And you want to learn the right thing. When you look on a blog, you don’t know if you can trust it rather than going to the lbrary and picking up a text book.”

• “When it comes working in a place, its completely disorganized.”

• “When you’re filling in forms, that type of thing. It’s not actually learning. Its general enquiries about how do I get my study leave.”

• “There is nothing better than direct email and direct contact.”

• “Facebook – does it have a role in training? No. Use it but its completely separate. Very doubtful for people use it for e-learning or professional.

• “They setup an F1 group for Facebook but I believe people are not really themselves on it. Twitter might be useful. It can be a less intrusive paging system to see a certain patient.”

• “In New Zealand they have a 120 character system where you can send from computer to mobile and select people who you want to send it too.”

• “If we’re talking about clinical opportunities – if he sees something he could put on a board and you go and try to learn from it, that would be useful. A shared area for resources so you put something up – like a bulletin board.”

Communications perceptions & challenges

• Regarding facebook – “Students communicate with friends and family. They ask silly questions, like where is the nearest supermarket or how do we get a parking permit. Or nightspots – the social side of it. I believe most students use Facebook. We get about half of each group to sign up to Facebook. Others say they can’t because it’s being blocked. It helps me to get to know them before they come.”

• ”Students sent out surveys to other students using SurveyMonkey too”

• “Some don’t want to come here because of social networks being blocked.”

• “Its quite embarrassing when they say they can’t go onto the Facebook. All the military sites were blocked. A student needed to do some research for her project on military medicine and IT would not lift up the restrictions.”

• “Problem with internet in accommodation as well because of lack of reliable IT provider. Students were wondering up in the nighties coming up to the centre to get access to Internet.”

• “I told them to get the 3g dongle. This was before they decided to include the price of accommodation with the dongle, which in the end never even worked. It screws people over when people are already on 18 month contract and forced to pay for access that is automatically included in the rent”

• “MySpace and Youtube are good but sometimes the firewall won’t even let you on the NHS website. And as for Twitter, there’s not access to that at all.”

• “We do however use SurveyMonkey which is a $200 annual subscription. We use it as part of audits, clinical audits.  It’s very easy to use actually and its better than the one that we have in house. Every teaching session we need to evaluate.  We keep a TrustWide spread sheet.  They use it for their appraisal.”

Teachers perceptions & challenges

• “I’ve been experimenting with Ning. I’ve got all different learners, I’ve tried with forums, failed miserably.”

• “It’s a different type of learning isn’t it, it’s actually the voluntary process because you actively learn it. Whereas in a ward, it doesn’t.  A lot of practical learning is missed. It should be shared. If you took the patient vs the Trust, you will realize that.”

• “There’s quite a lot of similar stuff on King’s and not reinventing the wheel. We should learn about their environment.”

• “There is also this thing called iPath, we have to login to.”

• “We also need to encourage those who just need a good kick up their back side to get them going in their learning. Its often things like my wife just had a baby or I don’t know.”

• “Traditional teaching is irreplaceable and this is just a supplement. A small group that you have to attend and register also is a professional point of it. But you can do it online by replicating the physical classroom scenario.”

• “For some people Facebook is second nature but for me, its not. I worry about the group trainees who are not motivated. It’s important to understand why their not motivated. Is it the trainers’ responsibility? It’s not but it is, therefore we need to understand why. The question is, are social networks a useful resource to help the trainee.”

• “The way I think of this, when I qualified in 1990 I had no ‘e’ anything. This is completely out of the box, in addition to what we have now. Now I can type into Google and a thousand results whereas before I have 6 books and refer to that. Makes it easier.”

• “An easy way to access with all the things that are good; if we can have a branch way to do and find it, that would be good.”

• “There is a example of distant learning in Cardiff, where there’s learning online and work very well. I think it’s the Diploma in Dermatology, run by the Wales University. It was a mixture of distance learning and a small group P2 they now use podcast type approach.”

• “What fresh cases are useful can be made available online, so there is a incentive for using the online resource by using it for sharing.”

• “By using YouTube, you could watch the video and learn. This is good for visual learners. But some people who are auditory learners.”

• “Some people just learn better than others. None of this is going to be the answer to this.”

• ”Sometimes its easier to be honest with a computer rather than a human being. “

• “It works both ways, there is massive learning material but do we use that to its massive learning potential. Maybe this is what sort of thing that it could tap into. Say if you want to focus on someone’s leg, The other way we can use is in general, you could use nationwide or area wide.”

• “Social networks are worth using it for exams for better group work.”

• “There has been a curriculum that has been created in that and would be suitable for podcast.”

Hope this was useful!

@Liz_Azyan xxx

This blog post is sponsored by Semantix Ltd.

Web 2.0 & Social media stuff by patients

In our enthusiasm to talk about government efforts to dive into web 2.0 and social media to deliver public services, I feel we often forget where it all started.  Before public service dipped their toes into the social media revolution, citizens/patients were already there. They were talking about their illnesses, creating communities of interest and interacting with each other way before e-petitions at No 10 Downing St was even launched.

The first on the scene was the empowered patient. Patients are participating in online communities to share and discuss daily life struggles to coping with rare diseases.  Here I’ve compiled a list of inspirational web 2.0 and social media stuff by patients for patients (and doctors too, if they like) ;o) I hope this will inspire us to look at what is already out there to better understand patients and try to engage with them on a level or platform they are already comfortable with. This list also includes other websites that help patients and also mobile applications that can help save lives.

An additional link I received this morning by @hadleypaul was this effort by the TV Programme ‘Embarrassing Bodies’  that managed to generate more traffic and interest on NHS information and services online. According to Paul

… Embarrassing Bodies show pulls in links, photos and uses the practice of social networking, then build it into their programmes, giving big hit rates for the NHS & PCT’s, engaging with viewers, and sharing good practice.

Click here to find out more about the event that featured Embarrassing Bodies.

Hope this was useful!!!

@Liz_Azyan xxx

This blog post is sponsored by Semantix Ltd.

I’ve recently talked to many medical professionals, learners and communicators within the NHS trust. They all have expressed their views and problems with the current e-learning software and IT infrastructure. This blog post highlights the challenges faced by all these stakeholders and hopefully better inform e-learning practices for medical students within the NHS trust.

Formal e-learning

Recommendations and views of Medical Professionals

• “It should be interesting, essentially needs to be delivered in a format that is fast and efficient. Compliance point of view there’s not point in doing e-learning because it becomes an activity tick box. Needs to be an enjoyable activity so that people want to do it and not have to do it.”

• “Trainees spend a lot of time on the ward and we want them to concentrate on the clinical training. If they have a podcast they can go back and learn at home. This will be the student aspect of their learning. Do on their own initiative.”

• “Exam preparation – curricular criteria? Exams and courses are clinically oriented, we need to redo, reinventing something that is already there. Portal into what is available not recreating the wheel.”

• “When you go to a particular website, the homepage turns me on or off, should be interesting and capture you and should indexed. If you need to click 6 times to get there, you’ll never get there. “

• “There needs to be a single route into e-learning instead of multiple systems because it’s difficult to get into. Website is unfriendly, uninviting and uninformative.”

• “The issue the mandatory training is a big chore to go through and people find ways to cheat the system, have two windows at the same time, one is the assessment window and the other is the test window…”

• “The medical schools are very clear and when students come out, they expect the same standard. It’s a showcase for us and most trainees do their homework and if you don’t have an interesting website, they won’t be go there. It needs to be a platform for all new types of learning, podcasts and etc.”

• “Subscribe to 123Doc, revision for exams. More and more they are going multimedia, they are a lot more interactive than it used to be. So it needs to be fast and efficient.”

• “The mandatory training is targeted at the entire Trust, there is no training to the people. It needs to appropriate to you.”

• “Because some of the team is not in the trust it doesn’t allow continuity.”

• “Would we need something there to sell the Trust to demonstrate its learning possibilities. We should show how the rooms look like, kitchen and how the living area looks like.”

• “Software’s that have been deleted is the 360 degrees virtual tour needs to be reinstated.”

• “The current website is restricted in its capability, others are selling a lot of stuff that we are doing which makes it look like a PCT are using. Its innovation latest technology and clinical stuff is what attracts people. It also needs to be location based.

• “You need resources to create it and capability. Think outside the box, there are 2 other universities here that need to learn how to use these technologies and tap into their resources. Its work experience for them, the best way of learning is to actually do the job.”

• “In terms of websites, less is more. The website has become a dumping ground. We don’t separate between marketing and functions for staff and users. We need a proper marketing front end to it. Front end must be for both patients and trainees.”

• “Information is a huge site but the information does is not updated. Hoping this project can go hand in hand with the whole redesign of the website.”

Recommendations and views by ‘Learners’

• “At the moment we are using BMJ learning house modules, which we print out the certificate.”

• “Using the pass text, you pay. You hope that everything that you learn from that can fit into the pass text.”

• “The internet access is so bad. You can’t use the wireless and mobile broadband access too, limiting the e-learning access.”

• “Its so painful because once you try to go to the next page, you’ve been idle for so long because you’ve been logged out.”

• “We’d like to see a tool that is web-based, and type a quick question with an x-ray. It needs a vehicle that can build e-learning and share teaching resources. Easy to access, easy to remember.”

• “Questions should be tagged to see which department it is relevant to for level of content, speciality, user and subject.”

• “At the moment we are using Stratogy, which is very expensive and the London Deanery pays for it. We also use “Pass Medicine for examination, which is also a paid site.”

• “You can access from outside but you have to register but you must put your leaving date.”

• “We don’t have a computer centre, the one that are available doesn’t have access to the clout/e-learning.”

• “If you have a slide and upload and share it online. So a protected network is needed to protect the content. The lectures at Kings College need to email to administrator and they upload it. Sometimes they just don’t bother because it’s too much hassle.  And administrator ends up with a bunch of slides.”

• “It has to be user-friendly, it needs to be nice and simple. You don’t want everyone controlling. Put ratings on content.”

• “We also` learn managerial e-learning such as child protection, health and safety, blood transfusion, complaining. There is no structure to it; they don’t follow on from one to another. We try to get through them ASAP.”

• “The disadvantages of the managerial e-learning modules are it’s for everybody from care assistant to doctors and level of knowledge is different.”

• “We need reliable internet access. We use the other room but its temperamental.”

• “Needs to be a short because doctors don’t have time. 2 min case studies. 18 – 20 mins max is what education shows.”

• “Should be accessible from within the trust, boards, library, and accommodation.”

• “E-learning is quite useful is the Synaps website which is available for all London Deanery trainees. It’s informal. The benefits, the e-learning things should be credible and up-to-date. That credibility must come form seniority. You cant based your practice on people who are not experienced. Must be from seniors. ”

• “Some questions are difficult, some you are only going to right if you read the material. The Trust knows its rubbish and they’re redesigning.”

• “Regarding the e-learning for health, we haven’t used it, though we did get email about it (junior doctors). It is not for all colleges yet, loads for anaesthetics etc. Very vigorous process modules.”

• “There are issues with mandatory learning to be accessible anywhere because some things need to stay within work hours.”

• “Most interesting audits are usually published and all been peer reviewed so you can trust it. We have a lot of formal resources that are dependable.  You just have to look at the ward to see its not working.”

• “Online lecture notes, 3^rd year Kings College Virtual campus. They don’t mark it, but they’ve got the capacity to do so. No one bothers to see if anyone does it. You just put anything in the text box and it will come up with an answer.”

• “They do setup face-to-face with the tutor to discuss the e-learning module together. However it depends on tutor on effectiveness of e-learning once its printed out.”

• “Bigger issues when it comes the trust should be department specific and should be commission lead.”

Recommendations and views of ‘Communicators’

• “Its boring, exactly the same since I started here. The fire learning module, I know all the answers.”

• “It’s easy to use and has relevant modules for doctors but only use it only from home. “

• “In regards to Kings Virtual Campus, my students have never complained apart form it being a bit slow on the trust computers. I think things are going well because students are usually the first to complain.”

• “Its Trust Wide, same software, very depressing.”

• “I use Doctors.net. Its independent from the NHS. I also use the BMJ, which is easy to use and covers a whole range of topics.”

• “After you qualify, you pass, there are other e-learning sites such as, On examination, Pastest and Pass Medicine. The content is sufficient.”

• ”In terms of accessibility, provision sites you have to pay. I haven’t but I might do when I get there. Its £80 for a few months for the provisions and £2000 for 1 exam. There should be a Trust Wide subscription.”

• “First time you learn, but then after you don’t. But what you do on your site, it doesn’t cover that. You don’t learn where you have to physically.”

• “It helped with exams but not planning to use again.”

• “I was from Kings and its got everything, its good and sufficient. It was very useful.”

• “You can open the learning module alongside the exam.”

• “We were told to setup a virtual campus for us but I don’t see the point really because its already out there.”

• “We weren’t given time to do them, we do it in our own time.”

• “If we were given time in the trust, then you’d probably go through it all. But if you’re at home, you through it quickly not really wanting to learn.”

• “Some of the questions were quite silly, make it more interactive and relevant to what you’re doing.”

Hope this was useful!!

Liz xxx

This data was kindly collated by @inhumanbeing, Tony Roberts, a public health operative which also can be found here http://lgeoresearch.pbworks.com/SideBar. Its an interesting bit of information for those who are curious and want to improve things.

Tony has kindly started this list and it would be great if others can help to build upon it. The knowledge can surely help all of us to better use Twitter as a tool for communication with citizens more effectively and efficiently.

Note: The details have been stripped down a bit to fit into the blog format. You can find the complete details on the Wiki Sidebar.

North West Councils using Twitter Client List

*Bot or Human is assessed from reading the twitterstream and looking for common phrases, use of bit.ly links at end of tweets, and twitterfeed clients–inhumanbeings

Mon Dec 21 20:38:04 2009

As mentioned before, I was due to present at the Preconference for the EU 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference last week. The title of the preconference was, eGovernment Research and Innovation: Empowering Citizens through Government Services across Sectors and Borders. I did a presentation that was well-received by the audience and thought I’d share it with my readers. Enjoy!

Hi all,

I’ve finally got around to doing what I’ve been wanting to do for a very long time. I’m opening up all the research data I have to local councils to own and update as often as you like. I know I am unable to update this data on my own any longer, especially with the increased uptake of social media by UK Local Councils.

The LGEO Research Wiki Page

I’ve setup some wiki pages on Pbworks some time ago with some other local gov stuff that I think you might find interesting. Today I’ve added the most important pages of them all, which are all the social media data I have up till the 22nd of July this year.

You can find all the cool stuff on the Frontpage here. http://lgeoresearch.pbworks.com/

If you want to go straight to the social media “juicy stuff”, follow these links.

1. Twitter Wiki
2. Facebook Wiki
3. Flickr Wiki
4. YouTube Wiki

Also don’t forget the two other interesting pages

1. LocalGov Researchers List
2. LocalGov Upcoming Events Page

Help make LGEO Research the portal for all your data!

I’m hoping this collaborative effort will continue to grow and help local councils across the UK to own their data in a more constructive and innovative way. I’m always open to suggestions and feedback to improve and grow. So please spread the word and make this portal a place where all local councils can come to get and update your most latest social media data.

Hopes and dreams…

I’ve always felt guilty for not being able to provide up-to-date and real-time data to all of you due to time restrictions and other commitments. So my hope is that by providing this platform/portal and initiating this collaborative effort, the data will be more responsive to real-time updates and social media progress in UK local gov.

Hope this was useful!
Liz xxx

To be added, follow @OZGovLocal

Australia Local Governments on Twitter

To be added, either follow @CanadaLocalGov or leave your councils twitter in the comments.

Canada Local Gov on Twitter

To be added, either follow @USALocalGov or leave your councils twitter in the comments.

USA Local Gov on Twitter