Using a Facebook Group for interactive clinical learning

Background: Facebook is a popular social networkingsite with more than five hundred million users.This study assessed whether Facebook Groups can beused to teach clinical reasoning skills.Methods: Sixty-seven final year medical studentsfrom the International Medical University, Malaysia,were exposed to interactive online learning througha Facebook Group for a period of six months in thisstudy. The purpose was to determine if supervisedinteractive online learning could be used to augmentthe deep learning that comes from learning medicineat the bedside of patients. The interactive onlinediscussions were entirely triggered by clinical problemsencountered in the medical wards of the generalhospital to which these students were attached.Results: A total of 10 topics were discussed in thisforum during the duration of this study and an example ofone such discussion is provided to illustrate the informalnature of this kind of learning. The results showed ahigh degree of student involvement with 76 percent ofstudents actively participating in the discussions.Conclusion: The high degree of voluntary participationin the clinical discussions through the Facebook Groupin this study tells us that Facebook Groups are a goodway of engaging students for learning and can be usedin medical education to stimulate creative clinicalthinking.