Henry Ford Hospital Surgeons Twitter Surgery As Outreach & Teaching

You may have already heard the buzz about this, since it is in a lot of news venues.

CNN: Surgeons send ‘tweets’ from operating room: www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/02/17/twitter.surgery/

Since it is a local group doing this, I wanted to be sure to bring it to the attention of the University of Michigan community. Ten days ago a surgical team at Henry Ford Hospital twittered a surgery. (More about Twitter.) The first time a surgery was twittered it was done by the patient who was under local anesthesia for the procedure on his legs. (More about the original twittered surgeries.)

That was quite fascinating. Reactions to that suggested the idea that twittering (or tweeting) surgery might serve as yet another way to provide outreach and education about surgical procedures. The docs at Henry Ford took the idea and ran with it. Concept proposed, approved, selected what type of surgery they wanted to educate folks about, Twitter explained to patient and family, authorized by the patient and family, tech accommodations made in the operating theater if needed, protocols proposed … all in a couple months. Wow!

I remember a few years ago when my college-aged daughter developed a fascination with surgical videos broadcast on cable. Luckily, I’m not squeamish, and I do have a professional interest in all things healthcare, but I never did understand why my daughter found this to be high entertainment. I especially did not understand since trying to get her to go to the doctor is almost impossible, and the closest she comes to healthcare is usually autoclaving tattoo needles. From the fact that they actually have surgical videos on cable, my daughter is evidently not the only non-healthcare weirdo who finds some sort twisted thrill in watching random surgical videos.

It is different when people are trying to learn something about the procedure – if they or a family member might be going through this. Surgical videos are a wonderful way to get a better understanding of what might happen, as well as to get used to the idea that people go through this and it is OK, they are fine. So now, if you search YouTube for the word “surgery” you get 55,000 results; if you search Google Video for surgery you find over 68,000 videos; if you search Google for (Surgery OR surgical) Videos YouTube you get 1,300,000 results. Alright, I get the idea. People want to know about surgery, or they want to tell about their surgery.

The drawback of the videos is that for those who are squeamish, well, um, the videos can be a bit graphic, or upsetting. What do you do if something upsets you, or you have questions about what is happening? This is where Twitter comes in. With LiveTweeting the surgery, people in your extended audience can virtually observe the surgery without getting too grossed out, and can ask questions in real time and get answers. This is what happened during the Henry Ford tweeted surgery. Here’s some example tweets.

Are the blood vessels feeding the tumor?

branches of the main blood vessels are feeding the tumor, it is important to dissect and clip them

Now for that example, Henry Ford’s surgical resident who was doing the twittering was actually answering a question from someone local, also in Detroit. During the surgery, they also responded to questions from:

• Words_by_Chris in Swansea, UK
• Cubus in Antwerp
• TStitt in Redwood City, California
• TopherAlexander in Chicago
• SavvyDaddy in Chicago
• MSpeir in South Carolina.

I don’t know that they could keep up with this if a large group of people got really excited and started asking lots of questions, but you get the idea. Pretty exciting potential, eh? In addition to sending out descriptions via Twitter, they also grabbed video from the Operating Room cameras and pushed it into YouTube.

YouTube: VUI Surgeons (Henry Ford Hospital): http://www.youtube.com/user/VUIsurgeons

Henry Ford Hospital tried this out in January with a bladder surgery. They are doing it again on March 6th. Think about it. Outreach, education, real time engagement with observers around the world, all via social media. Stay tuned.

Mobile Education Opps and Apps from UM’s Soloway

I’ve been on a real mobile kick lately. Dusting off Rheingold’s book, reading up on mobile tech for library reference, and much more. I’m not the only one! UM Prof. Soloway has come up with software to help facilitate using cell phones as education technology devices in the classroom. Check it out – he’s a bit of a character.

Livetweeting Andrea Forte, Learning in Public

Earlier this week, I attended a presentation by Andrea Forte on “Learning in Public” and the use of social media such as wikis and Wikipedia in formal education. Here is the twitter stream related to this event.

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Live tweeting – Andrea Forte: Learning in Public – Info Literacy, SocMed and Public Schools

HS Student: I’ll look at government sites first because I *know* I can trust them

swbuehler @pfanderson So naïve

TeeMonster @pfanderson Was he absent when his history class was covering Watergate?

TeeMonster @pfanderson More to the point — is that HS student missing THIS: http://tinyurl.com/cejcb8 #blackout

@TeeMonster Thanks!! Good link! I’m saving this. AF’s talking abt SocMed as community of practice, gradually moving towards centrality.

Orientation of contemporary students to online information. Focus of talk on Wikipedia as publishing model & social engagement venue

@swbuehler Yes – that was her point. And the room laughed when she emphasized the trust aspect of the comment

AF: Information literacy is a problem of people knowing how to act in communities, not just finding but also contributing

She highlights: NewGrounds, YouTube, Digg, Bloglines, Wikipedia, Twitter

Discussing model: Wikipedia assumes good will and consensus and ethical behavior of editors.

kgs @pfanderson except sometimes it stops at edit wars, because Wikipedia is a human product, and therefore fallible

@kgs AF: that is part of consensus building – info goes in or stays out. But yes, all human knowledge is fallible and susceptible 2 change

NYT Quote: “The problem w/ Wikipedia is that it only works in practice. In theory, it never works.”

h2cm @pfanderson Hi. Thanks I just favorited your tweet re. WikiPedia. I’ve a blog post to follow… Governance is a major issue

@h2cm She is actually talking about a governance class she used for this. Check out her articles: Andrea Forte.

AF: Wikipedia as learning environment. Disagreements > edit wars > consensus > knowledge building discourse

AF: Wikipedia process: Assertion > Challenge > Support > Resolution. INCLUDED: “How do we know this?” aka info literacy

AF: Example: global warming = politicized issue, does this mean it is ok to cite political documents?

AF: Latour/Woolgar sociology of science: “Messy, cyclical, often emotional process of making claims, peer-review, publication” eg Wikipedia

Q from remote audience. Parallels Wikipedia w/ FLOSS community. What is primary motivation for participation? A: We don’t know.

Q: What are the demographics of Wikipedia authors? A: We don’t even know male/female. Where anonymous edits come from is avail, not authors

AF: Affordances for learning implicit in the process of working in Wikipedia. Can we create these same opportunities in other venues?

AF: Classrooms not self-selected. Social connections/structures very different. Does publishing 4 real audience change how content is cre8d?

AF: Students don’t perceive wiki/blog publication 4 class as public forum. Assume no one will look. Except their friends. Oops

AF: Talking about problems with legitimate citation management in Wikipedia. I was only person in audience who’d tried. Interesting.

AF: Recs for classwikis: support citation, protect privacy, support classroom social relationships, make it easy for teacher to find identity.

AF: Likes MediaWIki because opensource and large developer community. EG: ScienceOnline.org
My apologies – wrong URL. Right URL is http://www.scionline.org/

AF: Iterative process of sculpting wiki software 2 support academic & scholarly inquiry (proper citations). Using SciOnline in HS classrooms

AF: Findings: 1: students paid attention to non traditional features of SocMed – own experiences, personal focus, reflection

AF: Findings: 2-3: audience changes behavior in writing and metacognitive reflection on content

AF: Findings: 4: wiki supports process of learning AS a community

AF: Stdt assmt strategies support new heuristics: is material licensed for use? intellectual property entered the classrm. w00t!

AF: students assumptions that if MANY people have reviewed and edited content that consensus must be close and info is accurate

AF: Stdt assessment: Is wikipedia safer because of checks and balances? or less worthy because it is an “edited” (ie. open) source?

AF: Reasoning about why they cite: sense of responsibility to audience *beyond* grading rubric. People care, therefore I want to do it right

AF: what is pedigree or provenance of your info? does it have a credible background?

AF: Students noted that the hard part was writing science in simple language for middle schoolers and broad audience

AF: neat phrase: “cognitive apprenticeship” – how people learn to contribute value in wikis, examining how peers contribute, role modeling

AF: Info takes on new meaning when school work becomes *authentic public resource* rather than simply assessment of learning

AF: more than half young people creating new content online. Opportunity for education? Responsibility for assessing also distributed

AF QUOTE: “Education is not preparation for life, education is life.” John Dewey 1938.

AF: Change in writing was less qualitative product than shift in process and level of engagement.