Tweetchats

The #ResNetSLT Twitter Journal Club is a monthly online forum created in January 2016, where we have been discussing current topics based on a published paper. This is always the last Wednesday of the month at 7.30 – 8.30pm (UK time).

Each one-hour chat comprises a blend of discussion on topical professional issues and guided critical appraisal to highlight relevant considerations about research design and processes. We are particularly pleased when the paper authors have also joined the discussions.

With thanks to our volunteers on the ResNetSLT Action Group for co-leading those sessions, we make sure all the papers are either already open access, or we’ll post links from our supportive publisher contacts.

The #ReSNetSLT Journal Club Tweetchats are promoted on our website, giving the date, link to the paper and synopsis of ‘what this paper says’, plus questions to structure the one hour discussion session.

After the chat we post a link to the full transcript of the discussion, together with a brief summary of the chat. This is available to be accessed by everyone, not only those on Twitter.

We also post direct links for other related references and resources. Don’t worry if you haven’t joined a Tweetchat before – you can find lots of advice here from the #WeCommunities “Twitterversity”.

The engagement in our Twitter community of practice has demonstrated national and international reach and reinforces our clear focus on promoting increased implementation of evidence-based practice improvement.

Tweetchats are a great continuing professional development opportunity, and there is no pressure for anyone to add comments unless they wish to – there is much to be gained by simply logging in and ‘active watching’. You can find advice on how to record Tweetchats for your portfolio here.

Our @ReSNetSLT Twitter account was launched on October 10th, 2017. We were thrilled to be invited to join @WeSpeechies for an exciting discussion hour on how Twitter has started to make an impact on our clinical practice.

Thanks to @BronwynHemsley for leading that session, and thanks to @VJoffe and City University for welcoming us. Here’s the link to the full transcript from the hour – packed with many discussion threads on what individuals have found helpful, difficult, frustrating, inspiring etc.

We’ve found that in these fast-paced Tweetchat discussions it’s not possible to follow all the interesting threads of the conversations. And the condensed nature of the Twitter exchanges means that it’s not easy to develop fully articulated arguments.

So, here’s what we think – it’s still a brilliant, easily accessible and equitable forum for us to exchange some comments and views, to make speedy links to highly relevant resources and to identify people you’d like to contact later on for a more in-depth communication on the topic.

But let’s complement this with sharing blog posts of slightly more extended Viewpoint pieces. We’d love to hear from you – please get in touch with us by email or message @HazelRoddam1.

ADVISORY NOTE

We all need to be aware that any publicly available Tweets (ie Tweets that are sent from a Twitter account that is set to ‘public’ and is not ‘locked’) are in the public domain and may be used for social media or health research, or used by journalists when reporting in the media.

Publicly available Tweets tagged with #ResNetSLT may be collected through third party software applications, for example the Symplur Healthcare Hashtags website.

We may use these transcripts to understand more about how we are meeting our goals by using blog posts, Tweets, and Twitter hashtag chats, and how we can continuously improve this initiative.

By taking part in #ResNetSLT chats you are giving implied consent that you agree to your Tweets being used in our quality improvement research.

If you have any concerns about the use of your publicly available Tweets in this way, or do not wish to be quoted publicly on this wesbite, please email Dr Hazel Roddam.