Digital professionalism workshop at AMEE 2010

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?


Do you exist if you‟re not online?


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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


• 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?


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


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' information literacies are relatively

weak but learners have little awareness of the

problem”

(Beetham et al 2009)


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


• 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


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


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


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



about how what you say or do reflects on

others, both individuals and

organizations, and act with appropriate

restraint

Ellaway, 2010



about how what you say or do will be

perceived in years to come; consider

every action online as permanent

Ellaway, 2010


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


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.








Digital professionalism workshop at AMEE 2010

Documents

Transcript of Digital professionalism workshop at AMEE 2010