digital professionalism workshop at amee 2010
DESCRIPTION
Digital professionalism workshop at AMEE 2010 given by Rachel Ellaway and david ToppsTRANSCRIPT
Digital
Professionalism
Rachel Ellaway and David ToppsNorthern Ontario School of Medicine
Digital Professionalism
Introductions
What is DP?
Activity: war stories
Why is it a problem? Why is it also an opportunity?
Three constituencies
Activity: DP in the hidden and explicit curriculum
Developing a DP curriculum
Activity: action plan
Discussion and close
What is digital professionalism?
Digital Professionalism
Do you exist if you‟re not online?
Digital Professionalism
• Informatics competencies in practice include:
• Evidence-based medicine, critical appraisal,knowledge
translation
• Information systems
• Legal/ethical issues
• Communication and education: with professionals and patients
• Technical skills
• Semantics: coding, tagging and structuring information
• Management, governance, reporting, audit skills
• Telehealth
Digital Professionalism
• Broader professional issues
• Boundaries between public and private
• How to be a professional and a person in an ambient
digital environment
• Dealing with monitoring, surveillance and tracking
• Maintaining an appropriate digital profile
• Your reputation now … and later
• Your institutions‟ profiles
Digital Professionalism
• Do you use these skills in practice?
• How do you learn them?
• Are they audited?
• Are they valued?
kids today
• 2010 study of 3,000 parents and 1,000 8 to 15-year-olds in
the UK
• 40% of girls identified Facebook as one of the most important
things in their lives – cf 6% of boys
• 6% of boys selected social networking in their top three things
in their lives, cf 40% of girls
• Girls saw websites such as Facebook as much more
influential than television, magazines, celebrities and even
their own brothers and sisters
• While 41% of girls think technology is one of their biggest
influences, cf 17% of boys
Are contemporary students different?
• Many Gens
• Prensky: “digital immigrants and natives”
• Tapscot: “media generation”
• Howe and Strauss: “millennials”
• Rideout et al: “Gen M”
• Wesch: classrooms today
• Sits on weak evidence
Are contemporary students different?
• Issues of opportunity
• Issues of distribution of risk
• Issues of accommodating previous experience
• Issues of competence vs confidence
• Different social, professional and generational groups adopt
different levels and forms of cyborg behaviours
• Significant differences across and between any student cohort
• Medical students are highly atypical
• Confidence ≠ competence or appropriate behaviour
Digital Professionalism
• Informatics competencies to be learned and assessed
include:
• Evidence-based medicine, critical appraisal and knowledge
translation
• Information systems
• Legal/ethical issues
• Communication and education: with other professionals and with
patients
• Technical skills
• Semantics: coding, tagging and structuring information
• Management, governance, reporting, audit skills
• Telehealth
Digital Professionalism
• Broader professional development issues
• Boundaries between public and private
• How to be a professional and a person in an ambient
digital environment
• Dealing with monitoring, surveillance and tracking
• Maintaining an appropriate digital profile
• Your reputation now … and later
• Your institutions‟ profiles
Digital Professionalism
• Do you exemplify these skills?
• Do you teach them?
• Do you assess them?
• Where are these skills valued?
• Where are these skills disregarded?
Isolation?
We are all a part of society
Isolation is not healthy, not realistic – ask
any rural doc
New media blur and bleed across our
professional and personal lives
We need to identify, understand and
model professional behaviour in a new
media environment …
Activity: war stories
Problem? Opportunity?
Digital Professionalism
A hidden curriculum of digital
professionalism …
• We are troubled by the
digital in our students, in
our institutions
• Student digital
„misdemeanors‟ on the rise
• Response is to regulate
and punish
Digital Professionalism
Would we punish poor
communication skills or
professionalism if we had
never taught and exemplified
appropriate forms?
Should we not model, assist
and guide professional
digital behaviours?
The Literature
• General themes and principles
• Clinical in-context issues
• How best/creatively to use Web 2.0
• Digital as instrumentation rather than social milieu
• Growing unease and problems around DP
• “education and instruction on role modeling of
professional behaviors and appropriate content
must occur at multiple levels”*
• Are guiding principles and interpretations enough?
* Farnan et al, AcadMed, 84(11) 2009 – The Realtionship Status if Digital Media and Professionalism
Attention Deficit Disorder
• The principles stand
• The context, the environment, has changed
• No requirement for programs etc to address
digital professionalism
• Risks and scandals
• Near misses
• We are rabbits in the road
Digital nomads
Many communities
Massive exchange
An unseen medical education „cloud‟
What we are not doing
• Learners and teachers cyborgs – but left to own
devices (!)
• Actions may disrupt org or others or invade
rights of others
• Subliminal content as endorsement – hidden
curriculum of acceptable behaviours
• Later repercussions – ieFacebook/MySpace
postings
What we are not doing
• We have abandoned a generation of learners by
not teaching and modeling professionalism in
being a cyborg
• Are they abandoning us?
• Not just students – junior faculty, residents etc
• We are all at risk
The consequences
• As long as we focus on technologies as external
tools, enablers and catalysts, rather than on the
cognitive relationships we have with them, then we
will continue to:
• Perpetuate a toxic and growing hidden curriculum
• Misdirect and confuse learners
• Put patients, practitioners and the h‟care system at risk
• Fail to prepare practitioners for contemporary practice
Scholarship and DP
Research and scholarly enquiry are lacking
What is a digital professional and are there any
boundaries?
How do c-teachers prepare c-learners to become
c-professionals caring for c-patients in a c-society?
What of this is medicine-specific?
What can we change and what changes us?
Four constituencies
Learners, trainees, students
“many medical students seem unaware of or
unconcerned with the possible ramifications of
sharing personal information in publicly available
online profiles even though such information
could affect their professional lives”
(Ferdig et al, 2008)
Learners, trainees, students
“learners' information literacies are relatively
weak but learners have little awareness of the
problem”
(Beetham et al 2009)
Learners, trainees, students
Why are the „digital natives‟ so stupid?
Learners are nomads
We encourage their migration to the digital
We are unaware of the migration from the
medical school – provider vs family
We encourage recklessness
Poor appreciation of consequences
Ground zero for building digital professionalism
Drs, preceptors, health professionals
“most learners are still strongly led by tutors and
course practices: tutor skills and confidence with
technology are therefore critical to learners'
development”
(Beetham et al, 2009)
Drs, preceptors, health professionals
• Interstitial and quasi-digital
• Need to be better digital professionals –
especially junior members of the profession
• Need to find new balances and alignments
within the professions
• Need to model and lead rather than abdicate
non-clinical participants
• teachers, admins, techs etc
• non-aligned ethical and professional norms
• academics: research and scholarship
• techs: critique and responsibility
• admins: policy and investment
• need to validate, model and enable
Digital Professionalism
• For everyone involved in HPE
• Core shared values and culture
• Exemplify and demonstrate digital
professionalism
• Medium as message
Activity: DP in hidden
and explicit curricula
Developing a DP curriculum
Digital Professionalism
Principle #1: establish and sustain an on
online professional presence that befits
your responsibilities while representing
your interests. Be selective in which
channels and places you establish a
profile.
Ellaway, 2010
Digital Professionalism
Principle #2: use privacy controls to
manage more personal parts of your
online profile and do not make public
anything that you would not be
comfortable defending as professionally
appropriate in a court of law
Ellaway, 2010
Digital Professionalism
Principle #3: think carefully and critically
about how what you say or do will be
perceived by others and act with
appropriate restraint
Ellaway, 2010
Digital Professionalism
Principle #4: think carefully and critically
about how what you say or do reflects on
others, both individuals and
organizations, and act with appropriate
restraint
Ellaway, 2010
Digital Professionalism
Principle #5: think carefully and critically
about how what you say or do will be
perceived in years to come; consider
every action online as permanent
Ellaway, 2010
Digital Professionalism
Principle #6: be aware of the potential for
attack or impersonation, know how to
protect your online reputation and what
steps to take when it is under attack
Ellaway, 2010
Digital Professionalism
Principle #7: an online community is still
a community and you are still a
professional
Ellaway, 2010
Activity: action plan
Discussion and close
Digital
Professionalism
Rachel Ellaway and David ToppsNorthern Ontario School of Medicine
References
• Beetham, H., L. McGill, et al. (2009). Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the
Digital Age. Glasgow, Glasgow Caledonian University/JISC. Online at
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/projects/llidareportjune2009.pdf
• Bryden, P., S. Ginsburg, et al. (2010). "Professing Professionalism: Are We Our Own Worst
Enemy? Faculty Members‟ Experiences of Teaching and Evaluating Professionalism in Medical
Education at One School." Academic Medicine 85(6): pp1025–1034.
• Chretien, K. C., S. R. Greysen, et al. (2009). "Online Posting of Unprofessional Content by
Medical Students." JAMA 302(12): pp1309-1315.
• Ellaway, R. (2010). "eMedical Teacher # 38: Digital Professionalism." Medical Teacher
32(8):pp705–707.
• Farnan, J. M., J. A. M. Paro, et al. (2009). "The Relationship Status of Digital Media and
Professionalism: It‟s Complicated " Academic Medicine 84(11): pp1479-1481.
• Ferdig, R. E., K. Dawson, et al. (2008). "Medical students‟ and residents‟ use of online social
networking tools: Implications for teaching professionalism in medical education." First Monday
13(9). Online at
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2161/2026
• Thompson, L. A., K. Dawson, et al. (2008). "The Intersection of Online Social Networking with
Medical Professionalism." J Gen Intern Med 23(7): p954-957.