The Role of Social Network in Plastic Surgery Training: Modernizing our Weekly Grand Rounds

Introduction: Professors and trainees at most institutions, gather every week to present general topics and review the week’s Morbidity and Mortality. During these sessions, we rarely discuss day to day events that are happening in our field, new discoveries, meetings we’ve attended. As we are living in an era of social technologies that empower users to generate content and share information in real time¹, we felt it was imperative we be informed and able to address questions of our patients and the public, about issues that may evolve in the online world. As most of us incorporate social media to communicate with friends, we have noticed recently that numerous Plastic Surgeons, Universities, Hospitals, societies, organizations, meetings and journals have incorporated the social network to benefit themselves and communities they serve.

Methods:  As there is no dedicated time or place to discuss these issues with our peers, and with many academic plastic surgeons not having the time or interest to consult daily social media, like those in private practice who do mainly to recruit patients, we created “Plastic Surgery Newsweek in 5 minutes”. Each week after grand rounds, the first author takes 5 minutes to go over the headlines in our field. By having an account with several social network websites, and by “Friending” or “Liking” societies (ASPS, ASAPS), journals (PRS, ASJ) or others, we receive updates, each day, that we can streamline and share with our peers.

Results: Since we started in July 2011, we discussed relevant issues such as the ALCL breast implant scandal, followed ongoing FDA debates on stem cells, presented highlights of national and international meetings, shared most viewed articles², to name a few. This initiative has been a success and received positive evaluations of all that attended throughout the weeks.

Conclusion: This represents one of many opportunities through which social network can keep us apprised of the latest trends in our field and can serve as a complement for ongoing learning at other institutions.

References:

1. George DR. "Friending Facebook?" A minicourse on the use of social media by health professionals. J Contin Educ Health Prof. 2011;31(3):215-9.

2. Rohrich RJ, Sullivan D, et al. Introducing the new PRS iPad app: the new world of plastic surgery education. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2011;128(3):799-802.