Many people view social media as trivial, and in present times its often difficult to find social media painted in a positive light. I've always loved it because I view it as more of an outlet for creativity, a way to explore and a venue to learn. More and more, I'm using it as a venue to learn and that is part of the reason why I started this blog! Yes, I partake in mindless scrolling through Pinterest and Instagram, but I realized that social media provides a great opportunity for engagement as well. The presence of health professionals on social media has boomed in the last few years, leading to popular Instagram accounts and Twitter accounts portraying everything from the daily lives of those in medicine, to study pearls for those training to be in medicine. It is through these social media venues that I've been able to communicate with healthcare professionals from other institutions and learn from the articles they post and the tips they so generously share. As the presence of healthcare professionals on social media grows exponentially, I feel it is important that students learn how they can utilize this to their advantage. I've talked before about how students interested in emergency medicine can use online resources to expand their interest, but today I'm going broad! Social media can be an important weapon in the educational arsenal of a student, if used properly. However, caution should always be taken when it comes to reading an individual's interpretation of a study, or opinion on a medication and we should try to ensure that there is a level of evidence-based medicine being applied. Still social media has the opportunity to broaden student horizons, introduce them to new concepts and help them discover new ways to study. Below I elaborate on some of the social media venues I utilize for this.


Pinterest

Pinterest is a fantastic site for the visual learner. I never used to use it for much more than searching pretty pictures of flowers or outfits but I discovered that Pinterest is also home to many infographs and charts as well. I used to have a really hard time remembering the flow of blood through the heart (silly, I know, but anatomy and physiology was never my strong suit early in pharmacy school). I remembered searching for a visualization of blood flow on Pinterest to keep on my phone and help reinforce the information. What I found was diagrams of blood flow, but also of ECG interpretations, and electrophysiology of the heart, all of which were concepts I found incredibly difficult to remember. I started to save these images to a pharmacy board, to go back to when my memory fell short. I can't completely credit my renewed confidence in my anatomy and physiology knowledge to Pinterest, but having those visual diagrams certainly helped. There are also some mnemonics (both visual and word-based) that I've discovered via Pinterest and have proved very helpful. So if you're a visual learner like I sometimes am, I would highly recommend creating a pharmacy board for yourself.

If you're looking for a place to start or an example of a pharmacy board, you can check out mine here!

Twitter

Twitter is really where I started exploring the opportunities for student education on social media. A preceptor I had introduced me to the many healthcare professionals on Twitter who create educational content and encourage academic discourse. I was ecstatic to find a community of people interacting with one another about new studies, and research, and sharing pharmacy pearls too! I always struggled with finding information about new studies so this was a great venue for me to see what my peers and preceptors had to say about what was going on in the pharmacy world. Getting started on Twitter and engaging with other professionals can be intimidating especially when you are a student, but I have often learned more from simply reading, or replying to tweets with questions.  The great thing about Twitter is that you don't have to engage if you don't want to; It can be a place where you just load your feed with great educators and sift through the articles. Special tip: a lot of organizations have specific twitters for certain specialities, for example ACCP has one for ambulatory care, infectious disease and emergency medicine. If you're interested in a certain field, you can customize your followers by searching for accounts that focus on your interests too!

Here are some of my favorite people/organizations to follow on twitter (in no particular order):

• Tony PharmD
• Find Your Script (Jessica Louie PharmD)
• CorConsult Rx
• Antibiotic Tweets
• The ED Pharmacist
• ID Stewardship
• Pharmacy Joe
• ASP Chat
• David Roy, PharmD
• The AB of PharmaC
• ACCP 
• ASHP