Professional Experience Placement

The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association has recently published a special issue on ‘Web 2.0’ technologies and healthcare. The editor in chief provides a summary of the nexus of the global electronic ecosystem in which social media, mobile devices and increasing public engagement have been ‘playing game-changing roles’.  The articles in this edition provides information about how these technologies have been harnessed to construct knowledge about the association between medication and problems by using ‘crowdsourcing’.  This is a technique where a task is outsourced to a large community of people. Similarly patients have become engaged in their own healthcare to construct knowledge about their care by reporting outcomes and providing data that can aid their care.

Another article discusses the collection of high quality data from patient and clinician sources to enhance care. The potential of this process is discusses as is the challenges of of preserving patient privacy and the difficulties associated with extraction of data.

In the clinical and learning and teaching spheres the development of Web 2.0 technologies impacts on clinical supervisors in a number of ways. Supervisors need to be aware of emerging technologies that are  accessed and used in their workplaces by other clinicians, patients and students.  They need to have an understanding of the policies and procedures associated with the use of these technologies in their places of work.  Supervisors need to ensure that their students a cogniscent of the policies. Additionally, clinical supervisors need to be able to facilitate their students into the culture of the workplace regarding the use of these technologies.

Clinical supervisors also need to be be aware of the electronic equipment or digital software that is used in their environment. They also need to be able to guide students in its appropriate use.

How does Web 2.0 impact on your workplace? Do you have any suggestions about how to incorporate best practice into your clinical supervision repertoire? Please post any comments below.