The study in utilization of social networking website Facebook in educational training of medical students in the emergency room

Abstract

Introduction: “Facebook” is being used as an educational tool in emergency room. This study will look at the use ofsocial networking website like Facebook as a training tool for medical students.

Method: ERRAMA Facebook website was created. The medical students were advised to become a member ofthe website and utilized it as a source of their educational training in study of interesting cases. The datawas collected from the daily use of the website by the medical students from March 16, 2011 toJuly 14, 2011.

Results: A total of 200 students applied for the membership of Facebook: ERRAMA. Out of these, 112 were 5^th yearmedical students (70% of year 5 students) and 88 were 6^th year medical students (72% of year 6 students). From a total of 470 cases uploaded on the website, 41% were interesting cases, an average read of378 per case and the average comments made per case was 3.4.

Discussion and Conclusion: The use of social networking website Facebook: ERRAMA as an educational tool for medical students in the emergency room received good responses with high visiting counts. The students were interestedin reading the cases with high attendance per case but the average comment per case was low (about 4 comments per case). The topics that contain images were popular, based on the numbers uploaded andvisited by student.

Key words: Facebook, Online education, ERRAMA