In recent
years, the use of social media by professionals has increased exponentially,
and health organisations are no exception. Whilst there should be some caution
in terms of the type of information and comment that is broadcast, on the whole
it has had a positive impact on the way we provide healthcare.
Social
media has clearly led to improvements in communication between staff and
patients, enhanced dissemination of information, learning or messages. In
addition it has greatly helped networking between staff in ways that were
previously not possible.
I currently
work as service lead for the Hospital Alcohol and Drug Liaison Team at
Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (Derbyshire , UK ).
The team consists of 2 nurses providing a range of specialist interventions
where substance misuse is a feature of patient’s lifestyle. It also plays a
vital role in improving the knowledge and skills of the hospital workforce and
enhancing the effectiveness of the local treatment system.
Around 5
years ago, the majority of hospitals in the UK did not employ substance misuse
workers; only a handful of services existed, which to some extent caused
isolated working and pockets of good practice. It is now thought that more than
65% of hospitals employ at least one worker, whilst a significant number have
services of 2 workers or more, with growing evidence of the importance of these
roles. Further benefits to patient care
and increased opportunities to engage with people on substance misuse issues
are also apparent.
However despite
a significant number of hospital-based substance misuse services across the UK
there is limited sharing of good practice, asides from a forum on the Alcohol
Learning Centre and a Liaison Network. As a result there are many missed
opportunities to highlight the excellent work being done. The same can be said
for the brief interventions agenda.
In my
experience social media should be considered by all those working in the
substance misuse field or delivering health interventions like IBA for the
following reasons:
Twitter:
- ’Tweeting’ can be an excellent
way of commenting on good practice, sharing innovations in your area of
work, and providing links to useful articles and comment.
- Using hashtags to bookmark discussions
allows for debate amongst like-minded people in regard to contemporary
issues: #wenurses is an
excellent example of this, providing a weekly platform to debate
contemporary issues. An #alcoholiba
tag is sometimes used too.
Blogs:
- Writing a regular blog on a
variety of issues can be a great method of sharing good practice and
encouraging others to improve their knowledge and skills in a particular
area.
- Many blogs will offer ‘guest
posts’ such as the one you are reading now!
Facebook:
- What was traditionally a truly
‘social’ media has increasingly become a platform for all kinds of
professional information, events and information sharing
Social
media does not provide a single answer but can be a useful tool to enhance our
practice and foster healthy debate about substance misuse work and IBA. Whether
it’s exploring specialists’ role in the provision of IBA, or issues such as the
treatment of the alcohol withdrawal syndrome, social media is an opportunity to
highlight the good work that we do, enhance knowledge, improve the consistency
of approaches and share learning and innovative practice.
Greater use of social media has the
potential to bring with it significant benefits to our practice and the care
that we provide to patients.
This blog was also kindly published recently in the Alcohol IBA blog: http://alcoholiba.com/
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