To assess the feasibility of using social media for neurologic education using the Twitter hashtag “#NeuroPostItPearls.”
Social media platforms like Twitter offer a powerful way to reach a global audience and the #neurotwitter community has grown exponentially since the COVID19 pandemic. To be searchable, educational posts are often hashtagged with a unique moniker. Creation of the #PostItPearls microteaching movement is credited to Michelle Lin, an emergency medicine physician, who in 2017 started highlighting teaching “pearls” by writing them on Post-its that were then shared on Twitter. Although widely shared, these were largely not applicable to the neurology community.
The hashtag #NeuroPostItPearls was launched on July 1st, 2022 with the aim of sharing bite-sized teaching with incoming neurology residents. For this study, data was collected about the number of participants and the Twitter analytics of top posts. We used an AI-driven Twitter analytic platform (“Tweepsmap”) to create a descriptive analysis of the data and to visualize the global reach and summative impact of the hashtag through September 2022.
Six authors shared original Post-it “Pearls” (“Pearls” per author ranged from 1-31). The most widely liked and retweeted content focused on neurologic differentials (Retweets 133/Likes 447), hypertonic bicarb for ICP crisis (96/449), strategies for tPA reversal (71/387), anti-seizure drug interactions (76/351) and the Guillain-Barré 20/30/40 Rule (78/281). The impression of high impact tweets was between 30k and 60k views. In total, posts with the hashtag generated nearly 1 million views (972K). The 48 original “pearls” were retweeted a cumulative of 969 times by 663 individuals across 58 countries. 67.4% of the Twitter users that retweeted them were healthcare workers.
Twitter is a viable platform for sharing microteaching with the global neurology community. Further study is needed about the long-term educational impact and best practices for teaching through social media.