Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking web service (http://www.delicious.com/), for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks (websites) for our interest groups. Use it like your favourites you save on your computer. The great thing about Delicious bookmarks is they are portable, accessible anywhere with an Internet connection. Key benefits to Delicious:

• access your bookmarks anywhere
• tag your favourites to sort them
• share your favourite sites with others
• see what other people are bookmarking

All bookmarks posted to Delicious are publicly viewable by default; however, you can mark specific bookmarks as private.

I have started my collection of bookmarks on Patient Safety here:
http://www.delicious.com/kathryn.ranjit/patient_safety

and started a collection of bookmarks on social media and health care here:
http://www.delicious.com/kathryn.ranjit/social_media

Ready to build your own online bookmark collection?
1. Go to http://www.delicious.com/
2. Click on “Join Now” at the top left corner

Patient Safety Must Include Patient Education

Why does 'Patient Education' matter?
An informed patient is a patient who can contribute to the 'safety net' that we health care providers, attempt to surround them with during their visit. We have many such safety nets in place: confirming physician orders, tw0-nurse checks and proper patient lifting techniques, if only to name a few. However, patient knowledge can contribute to that safety net as well: knowing their medications, understanding treatment plans and even recognizing unsafe situations.

Good Education versus Bad Education
Patients might find that they can't get much (or any) information from their health-care provider. Pamphlets or brochures aren't always available and they're usually only written at a Grade 6 level. As a result, patients will look elsewhere...and they might wind up knee-deep in the wrong resources. I think we can all agree that we have access to a wide variety of information these days, but can come from a variety of so-called 'experts' who are really just very opinionated! Numerous 'medical websites' exist on-line, where patients can view medical information written as though it were 'fact', when it really isn't much more than rumour or hearsay.

For Example, Let's Look at Blood...
A patient might be scheduled for surgery and they might also have heard about the possibility of autologous blood donation. The patient feels that this is something they'd like to pursue so they ask their surgeon about it. Their surgeon might or might not be able to provide much detail about the subject, so the patient decides to investigate on their own.

Now, Alberta Health and Wellness has some excellent material on the site: MyHealth.Alberta.ca This site is a good resource with noted authors, dates of updates and other indicators of good medical resources. The trouble is, it's not easy for the average patient to find this site if they don't know to look for it!

If a patient were to do a simple Google search on 'autologous blood', they would most likely come across: BloodBook.com This site doesn't have all the quality markers, but certainly looks bold and flashy...and it was easy to find.

If we don't look at quality Patient Education as an integral part of Patient Safety, we'll miss that opportunity to strengthen the safety net around our patients.

What is Social Media?

Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue, such as blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Distinct from industrial or traditional media, such as newspapers, television, and film, they are relatively inexpensive and accessible to enable anyone (even private individuals) to publish or access information, compared to industrial media, which generally require significant resources to publish information.

One of the foundational concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" in the hopes that you can become part of that conversation.

The main increase in social media has been Facebook (www.facebook.com). It was ranked as the number one social networking site. The main increase in social media has been Facebook. It was ranked as the number one social networking site. Other examples of social networking websites LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/), MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/), Ning (http://www.ning.com/).

Blogs are usually maintained by an individual or a group on a particular subject with regular entries of commentary, or descriptions of events. Most recent entries are commonly displayed first. Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and it is this interactivity that distinguishes them from other websites. Blogger (www.blogger.com) is one of the most popular platforms for blogs. While a blogger's anonymity is often tenuous, a blogger's code of conduct is often developed to justify acceptable behavior and online security can also be enhanced by not making the Blog publicly available.

Some of the social media tools that can help with collaboration or/and authority building are Wikis such as Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org/) and Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com/), social bookmarking sites including Delicious (www.delicious.com) and Google Reader (www.google.com/reader). In addition, Content Management Systems (i.e. Drupal at drupal.org) and Document Managing and Editing Tools (i.e. (Google Docs) are very widely used.

Social media also plays an important part in multimedia and entertainment. People use Youtube (www.youtube.com) for video sharing, Skype (www.skype.com) for livecasting, Flickr (www.flickr.com/) for photography and art sharing, and SecondLife (secondlife.com) to create virtual worlds.

References:

Social Media. Available from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media. Retrieved July 4, 2011.

Rutledge, P. (2010). Research Survey Launched: Social Media and Influence of Photos on Body Image. Retrieved July 4, 2011 from: http://mprcenter.org/blog/2010/08/04/research-survey-launched-social-media-and-influence-of-photos-on-body-image/

"Statistics". Facebook. http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics. Retrieved July 4, 2011.