In the News: WhatsApp in Onconephrology

A recent study published looked at using a "mastermind" chat using WhatsApp for onconephrology discussion. This group was created using Whatsapp in 2019. Since then close to 100 members are part of an ongoing online discussion. This study evaluated the 2 years of chat content via a survey, keywords and a full qualitative thematic analysis.

1. The keywords showed the figure below- The bigger the font, the most commonly discussed topic. 

2. In terms of thematic analysis, the 3 common themes that emerged were: collaboration, case discussions and knowledge sharing.

3. In terms of the survey, the key figure is below.  It is interesting that after uptodate.com, the chat was used by many for knowledge discussion and topic question answering. This is fascinating and could be because many of the topic experts and uptodate.com chapter writers were on this chat. 

Use of mastermind chats like this should grow in medicine. This allows for small subspecialty fields to have like minded individuals e-meet and discuss tough clinical challenges, share important knowledge and eventually collaboration for research. A recent paper on CDK4/6 inhibitors causing ATN was a result of collaboration led by this chat. 

Check out this amazing tweetorial by Prakash G on this.

Our manuscript Utility of WhatsApp® for onconeph education is out @CKJsocial @kdjhaveri @Sebi_Lapman , authored by 2 phenomenal students Simoni Khashi and Nitya Wanchoo, Quality analysis done by Kayla Kinuf @HofstraU @HofstraKidney @UCKidney @uofcincy @UCincyMedicine Tweetorial pic.twitter.com/ll46aCv7x2

— Prakash Gudsoorkar MD, FASN, FNKF (@prakashneph) December 16, 2021

10 Years of Nephrology Social Media

10 years and a few months ago, I wrote the first nephronpower post. It was simple and about a historical event in nephrology. My inspiration was the Late Nate Hellman from Renal Fellow Network. What has transpired since then is truly amazing for the field of Nephrology.

Few of us started blogging at National conferences, some of us tweeting like a storm. Finally, the academic community noticed this and soon ASN, NKF and all wanted tweets and blogs of their events. The first landmark paper summarizing some of this was in AJKD in 2011.

Following that, was the birth of AJKDblog or then called eAJKD. This allowed for more collaboration and more social media to flourish in nephrology and leading to the ultimate- Nephmadness ( mastermind game by the Topf Sparks team) in 2013.

After 2013, nothing was stopping nephrology to take the lead in social media.
From NephJC to tweetorials to whatsApp to creation of NSMC-- happening so fast and furious!

Nephrologists quickly stormed the social media world to lead and show how it's done!
In NDT is a brief tutorial for how to be social media savvy.

Academic journals- AJKDBlog
Journal club- NephJC
Well ironed blogs- Renal Fellow Network
Online Successfully run interactive game for over 7 years- Nephmadness
Online academy of educators for future social media wannabees- NSMC
Every fellowship program trying to have a twitter account and social media presence.

What else can you ask for?
All this is summarized in recent issue in Seminars in Nephrology by guest editor Joel Topf and includes all various aspects of the social media
Here is a nice tweetorial by Chan on the entire issue

Seminars in Nephrology has an entire issue devoted to social media in the discipline of nephrology.

The mastermind @kidney_boy highlights the contents here:https://t.co/1XhYQLpEyS pic.twitter.com/OQs757SxmI

— Teresa Chan (@TChanMD) June 20, 2020

Introduction to social media
Tweet or not to tweet
Twitter based journal clubs
Tweetorials
Podcasting
Newsletters
Visual abstracts
Slack
Semi-private Apps ( WhatsApp)
FOAM quality 
NSMC

Congratulation to the nephrology community to being leaders in education via social media in medicine!

In the News: Will the smart phone change Nephrology Care?

While smartphone apps have flourished in the general world we live in, Nephrology hasn’t seen direct patient care related smartphone apps. There are some great educational apps and a list of them are provided in a prior post on AJKD Blog. A survey done that was mentioned in that post focused mainly on educations of nephrology related apps.
The most recent CJASN issue presents perhaps one of the first( there might be more but not published) nephrology app that can be used in clinical practice. While this is not a randomized control trial, nor there was sustained long term follow up of these patients, this is a good start for a proof of concept for perhaps work in this area. This smartphone app targeted four behavioral elements in patients with CKD stage 4 or 5, it targeted BP, medication management, symptom assessment, and tracking laboratory results. The mean reductions in home BP readings between baseline and exit were statistically significant  and  27% with normal clinic BP readings had newly identified masked hypertension. In addition, medication errors were also identified.  An accompanying editorial also sheds some interesting thoughts on this concept. The editorial rightly addresses the downloadability of such apps. 
How many of your CKD patients own a smart phone?
If they do, how many are “techy” enough to download the app?
Mass use of such apps might be tough given the socio-economic barriers some of our patients might face.  Regardless, we need such apps and available for free for patients. Perhaps, we can teach them to download them and use them effectively to prevent re-hospitalization, medication errors, and offer and provide better patient care. 

Nephmadness 2015: A novel theme

NephMadness began in March 2013 as a social media education project of the AJKD blog.  From the beginning, we envisioned NephMadness as an ambitious month long social media campaign, featured in multiple AJKD blog posts that encouraged deep engagement. Two years and still running with power and fuel, the game has become a monster on it's own in the social media world in nephrology.

Welcome to 2015 now. The theme for NephMadness 2015 is nephrology’s connections with other specialties. The 8 topics are  listed below.  A detail account of history of Nephmadness and how to play the game is now available in an editorial in AJKD. In addition, check out www.ajkdblog.com for ongoing details and brackets appearing starting March 1st 2015.

1. Obstetric Nephrology
2. Infectious Disease and Nephrology
3. The Heart and Kidney Connection
4. Nephrology and Nutrition
5. Genetic Nephrology
6. Critical Care Nephrology
7. Nephrology and Vascular Surgery
8. Onconephrology


Let the madness begin!!

In the NEWS: Nephrology Social Media Collective (NSMC) Internship

Social Media internships are  new to the medical community. There is a short course that some schools offer to their medical students. We don't really know what the outcome of those courses have been on the students that take it. 

The Nephrology social media community leaders starting planning an internship in nephrology social media in Dec 2014 under the leadership of Joel Topf from PB fluids.  We feel that social media will not only enhance their skills as a nephrologists, but help spark some interest in budding nephrologists. This will be the first of it's kind in Nephrology. Check out the website at http://www.nephjc.com/internship

The internship is open for fellows, attendings, residents and our first class just got announced as well on the website. The projects they shall be working on are doing posts, tweets, and various projects.  Nephmadness would be a part of their training, with blog posts for PBfluids, RFN, Nephronpower, eAJKD, Ukidney.com and also being part of the rising online journal club( www.nephjc.com)



Please welcome Nikhil Shah, Chi Chu, Scherly Leon and Hector Madariaga as the first class of the first nephrology social media internship.

ACKD: Special Nephrology Education Issue

The Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease (ACKD) has a special issue on education this month. Interestingly there are some articles that might be of interest to many.
The entire issue is two fold- patient education and physician/trainee education.

For patient related education, check out the articles on
1. Acute start dialysis 
2. Health Literacy
3. Patient education in CKD clinic
4. Education of patients with interface with Primary care

For workforce and physician related articles, check out
1. Future of nephrology workforce( a summary of what ASN workforce group has been doing for the shortage)
2. Innovative teaching methods ( courtesy of myself, Matt Sparks and Hitesh Shah)
3.Online learning( a nice summary of nephrology online teaching tools and includes many blogs that are doing educational content. It summarizes the pros and cons of each blog and in addition has descriptive information regarding each one as well. PB Fluids already has a post on this.
4. Tweeting ( NOD takes on this one)
5. Digital media promotion of CKD

IN THE NEWS: The FACEBOOK EFFECT on Organ Donation

Facebook entered the transplantation world sometime back to allow for members to specify organ donation status on their pages. A recent article in the AJT discusses the impact of those changes on organ donor registration. In planning with John Hopkins, Facebook team allowed folks to update their Facebook timeline and decide on what organs they wanted to donate. If they did, it took them to their appropriate state donor registry and they were made aware of materials that offered information regarding donation. The study aimed to evaluate the immediate effect of this status update change on donation. Many updated their status but may have changed their mind but never registered with their state DMV or organ donation website. The online registration was increased with the Facebook effect but varied from state to state. As one reads the entire study, keep in mind this is the "immediate" effect they are talking about. Can this effect be sustainable? This is an observational approach and is it possible that other factors played a role cannot be ruled out. Can there be privacy concerns regarding this approach? Some food for thought...

Interestingly, 2 other studies have been done regarding this connection of Facebook with organ donation. A set of researchers looked at  Facebook for publicly available English pages seeking kidney donors, and information on recipient, page characteristics and if donors were tested. Only 91 pages met criteria in their study. What do college students think?- another study looked at that..

Blogging in nephrology: Local versus National conferences

Desai et al show in a study that scientific blogs can be a great tool in sharing and viewing scientific local meetings. Most of the recent literature and live blogging that has been done has been of national meetings. Most non academic practitioners want to hear about the happenings are national meetings. In Nephrology, many online blogging sites have done this in the last 4 years.  The data presented here in this manuscript suggests that while the number of viewers were less in local meeting blog posts, the minutes spent and time spent were equally comparable to national blog posts. The authors suggest that this would be a great way to share and use local conference material. Bogoch et al looked at blogging site of intern morning report and had subjective rating scales but knowledge content was not looked at. 

Overall,this manuscript is a step in the right direction and allows for openness of presentation of data in national and local conferences via blogging. Both conferences can be equally useful to the learner.  

Interestingly, publishing in formats as such( F1000 research journal) when peer review is also open and allows for free commenting before completely being accepted for publishing allows for more information to be discussed and an open dialogue. More and more journals should be moving to such platforms of publishing( at least partly). There might be red tape and other factors preventing this. The Plos Journals are a great example of the futuristic journal platform. Cost, and potential bias based reviews might be reasons why this might be not as attractive to many journal editors. 

20 Years of Uptodate.com

Invented by a Nephrologist, the uptodate.com has now made it to 20 years. We should be proud as a community for this excellent resource that was created by a Nephrologist who had a vision very early about what the future would entail. Check out this exclusive interview of Dr Rose.

eAJKD and NOD: ASN 2012

Check out the latest offerings from live updates from eAJKD
Nephrology on Demand also has eAJKD live blogging.

eAJKD updates: Medicine 2.0 coverage

Joel Topf, MD from eAJKD advisory board member's team has been live blogging and tweeting from the recent Medicine 2.0 conference in Boston.  Topics have been variable from interactive tools to patient outcomes data using web 2.0 applications.

Check out the live blogging posts on eAJKD.
http://ajkdblog.org/tag/medicine2conference/

CJASN Journal Club

The May eJournalClub of CJASN selection, "Efficacy and Tolerance of Urea Compared with Vaptans for Long-Term Treatment of Patients with SIADH" by  Alain Soupart, MD and colleagues


Check it out at http://ejc.cjasn.org/phpBB3/

International Nephrology Education Foundation(INEF)

The international nephrology education foundation or INEF was founded in 2010 by Dr. Meguid El Nahas from United Kingdom.  Its a charitable foundation to fund and support training, education and leadership in Nephrology and Medicine in emerging countries.

It is the same leadership as for the Global Kidney Academy website.  Have a look at this excellent resource for many.

http://www.inef.co.uk/index.html

Nephrology Education: You tube

As the Web 2.0 educational tools grow, face of nephrology education will be drastically changing.
Nephrology on Demand, an online tool for education from East Carolina Univ had developed a you tube video channel with video presentations from their in house speakers but also have very interesting 10 minute sessions that are in the format of the Khan academy. They make nephrology teaching very easy.
Check out their publication regarding this tool assessment. 
The you tube channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/nephrologyondemand/videos

Congress of Nephrology in Internet 2011

 The Organizing Comitee of 6th Congress of Nephrology in

Internet, CIN2011, is going to be held in November, probably right after the ASN meet 2011. 

It will be held next November 15-30th 

on http://cin2011.uninet.edu/

All presentations are online and from around the world. Its also free to attend. 

Should be a lot of fun.

Check it out

Social Media and Health Care Part 3: From ASN

Social Media and healthcare Part 2: from ASN

Social Media and Health Care Part 1: From ASN

In the News- Nephrology on the mobile phone

Use of mobile phone devices in medicine has become increasingly popular.  The editors of nephrology on demand did a study to see if the mobile version of their website was being used a lot.  10% of their major hits were from apple based mobile devices and mostly US based. This allows for further data that a fair amount of physicians and trainees are using these devices to get information and browse useful websites.  More studies and teaching tools using such devices should be needed.




Check out the full article regarding these findings at:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21659443




Also check out touch calc who is making many programs for the phones and devices in nephrology
http://touchcalc.com/

ASN Podcast - World Class Nephrologists

http://www.asn-online.org/publications/kidneynews/podcast.aspx
Check out the latest Podcast from ASN on Raheem Brothers - Nephrologists who are doing such great clinical work in rural medicine in Idaho.