Students produce social media guidance platform
Every year, the General Medical Council (GMC) and Medical Schools Council run a professionalism competition open to UK medical students.
This year’s task was to create an online resource that would help students apply the Achieving Good Medical Practice guidance to their use of social media.
Year 4 Student Doctors Xin Ying Chan, Yan Pui Lau (Dorothy), Htet Wadi Naing (Wendy) and Kulavee Prasansapakit (Earn) put together a comprehensive platform that was shortlisted for the prize and since shared with medical schools up and down the UK as a learning resource.
The students share the motivations and aims behind their Social Media Guidance for Medical Students website (link), based on their own experiences as student doctors.
“We decided to take part in the competition because we saw it as a great opportunity to explore an important aspect of medicine outside the university curriculum.
Not only were we able to consolidate our knowledge on the GMC’s Achieving Good Medical Practice guidelines, we were also able to create a platform where we can share this resource with our peers.
We understand that social media is very prevalent these days and is used by the majority of the public (patients, medical students, doctors, and other healthcare professionals alike).
While it is important to acknowledge the benefits of social media, it is perhaps even more crucial to be aware of the devastating consequences should it be used inappropriately.
It was a challenge to make the resource concise and at the same time informative. Instead of writing long paragraphs we created short real-life examples inspired by our experiences on placement.
We also strived to create a user-friendly website by adding voice recordings to each tab for those who are visually impaired.
After several sessions of brainstorming together, not only did we manage to complete our website, but we also had a memorable time working together! We hope our peers find this useful in being more conscious of the impacts of social media in clinical settings.”
Congratulations on your shortlisted platform!
Discover more
- Learn more about the opportunity on GMC Medical student professionalism competition (link).
- Refresh your knowledge on the Achieving Good Medical Practice guidance on the GMC website (link).
- Liverpool student doctors can explore further guidance on the Media Interaction section of the student intranet (link).