CME Available for the February 2016 #IGSJC!

For the first time (and thanks to the editors and publishers of the JAMA Network), CME is being offered for participation in a Twitter journal club. JAMA is making this free for this trial run. This is an unprecedented and amazing opportunity to help shape the future of CME – please join us!

From the editors at JAMA Surgery:

The JAMA Network with the approval and help of the AMA would like to expand how you can claim an AMA PRA Category I credit. Significant learning can occur when clinicians communicate with one another. Much of this communication now occurs in social media.

We are testing a new mechanism to facilitate communication in social media between clinicians about published journal articles and documenting what they learned from those discussions. We are testing a system where clinicians participate in social media conversations, write their impressions of what they learned and after review by our staff for reasonableness, AMA PRA Category I credit will be offered.

All you need to do – if you have not done so already – is answer the CME questions for article (link to it) – we will take it from there, you will be prompted to join a social media conversation on twitter, write down your impressions of the conversation, sent it to us within 2 weeks of the journal club discussion and get an additional credit.

Members of the AMA will have free access to take the quiz and claim the credit for the article. Non-members will need to register an account and buy a CME token to claim the credit prior to earning additional credit via the online discussion. Both the article and CME tokens will be made free for the participants in this trial.

The first test of this pilot program will occur between Feb 24, 2016 and Feb 25, 2016. The International General Surgery Journal Club (on Twitter: @Igsjc) will initiate a social media discussion using the hashtag #IGSJC. The discussion will be about a series of articles recently published on the use of antibiotics to treat appendicitis instead of surgery. The CME will be based on a JAMA article:

Salminen, P et al. Antibiotic Therapy vs Appendectomy for Treatment of Uncomplicated Acute AppendicitisThe APPAC Randomized Clinical Trial JAMA. 2015;313(23):2340-2348. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.6154.

Currently, this article has a CME quiz that counts for 1 AMA PRA category 1 credit. Participants in the social media pilot will be eligible for an additional 1 AMA PRA category 1 credit.

If successful, this pilot will facilitate a change in the definition of AMA PRA category 1 credits to include social media discussions. Even if you do not need the CME, we encourage you to participate in this pilot to facilitate the evolution of CME to recognize the learning that occurs when clinicians communicate on social media. If you are interested in participating in the pilot CME activity, please email cme@jamanetwork.org for more information.

#IGSJC Update

So we haven’t been as good at updating this blog as we have been at stimulating some excellent discussion and analysis on twitter. In the last year we’ve had more than 3,000 tweets by 444 participants in 5 separate journal club discussions! This month we are upping the game by offering CME for participation, with the help of JAMA Surgery.

Our article for February 2016 is “Antibiotic Therapy vs Appendectomy for Treatment of Uncomplicated Acute Appendicitis” from Salminen et al, and is available open access at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2320315

Thanks to all participants!

October #IGSJC

Niraj J. Gusani, MD, MS, FACS (@NirajGusani)

Join us for the October International General Surgery Journal Club tweetchat (#IGSJC) on Wed October 8th and Thursday October 9th.

Our topic this month is the effect of surgical complications on long-term outcomes after cancer surgery. The paper we have chosen is entitled, “Infectious Postoperative Complications Decrease Long-term Survival in Patients Undergoing Curative Surgery for Colorectal Cancer: A Study of 12,075 Patients.” by Artinyan, et al. at Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael DeBakey Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in Houston, TX. This paper was published online recently in Annals of Surgery and our colleagues at that journal (@annalsofsurgery) have graciously made the manuscript available for download free from October 1 – 31.

I will moderate the chat (@NirajGusani) and will be joined by primary author, Avo Artinyan, MD (@AvoArtinyanMD), and senior author David Berger, MD (@DHBBaylorMed). We look forward to a lively discussion on this important topic.

Please join us for what will be sure to be an engaging and stimulating conversation. A few reminders:
1) Please use the #IGSJC hashtag in all tweets
2) Follow authors @AvoArtinyanMD and @DHBBaylorMed and moderator @NirajGusani
3) RTs from the @IGSJC account are only to add #IGSJC hashtag or to repost questions to the entire community. They do not represent endorsements.
4) Search twitter for #IGSJC to see the entire conversation – Tweetdeck and Hootsuite are great tools to maintain a running search. More details about how to use Twitter and participate in a Twitter chat are available for those new to Social Media.

September #IGSJC

Our #IGSJC this month is “Systematic Review of Learning Curves for Minimally Invasive Abdominal Surgery.” For the first time this month we are working with Annals of Surgery – many thanks to the editors of Annals for allowing open access through the entire month of September.

We will be having author Dr. Rajesh Aggarwal (@docaggarwal) of McGill University participating, along with moderator Dr. Andrew Wright (@andrewswright) from the University of Washington.

Please join us for what will be sure to be an engaging and stimulating conversation. A few reminders:

1) Please use #IGSJC hashtag in all tweets

2) Follow author @docaggarwal and moderator @andrewswright

3) RTs from the @IGSJC account are only to add #IGSJC hashtag or to repost questions to the entire community

4) Search twitter for #IGSJC to see the entire conversation – tweetdeck is a great way to maintain a running search

August #IGSJC

August featured a lively discussion and debate about the timing of surgery for appendicitis, featuring the paper “Time to Appendectomy and Risk of Perforation in Acute Appendicitis,” again with open access for the month courtesy of JAMA Surgery. For the first time we had a resident participate as the author of the study, with author Thurston Drake MD (@F_ThurstonDrake) and moderator Ben Nwomeh MD (@bnwomeh) leading the journal club.

       

A transcript is available through Symplur.

July #IGSJC

The July #IGSJC was on the paper “Effect of Insurance Expansion on Utilization of Inpatient Surgery” with author Chad Ellimoottil MD (@chadellimoottil) and moderator Sam Finlayson MD (@srgfin). The paper was again made free to access for the entire month, thanks to JAMA Surgery.

          

 

A transcript of the chat is available via Symplur here.

June #IGSJC

Our June International General Surgery Journal Club was on the paper “Social and Clinical Determinants of Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy,” courtesy of JAMA Surgery.  Moderator Dr. Deanna Atai (@DrAttai) and Author Sarah Hawley PhD, MPH (@Hawleysaraht) did a great job leading a lively discussion.

We had over 1000 posts from 115 participants, reaching almost 3 million impressions!

A transcript of the discussion is available through at this link courtesy of symplur.com.

             

May #IGSJC Analytics and Transcript

There was yet again a fantastic response to the May #IGSJC. There were 447 tweets from 46 participants. Of these, 84 were original tweets and and 42 were links or pictures. There were 204 responses and 130 retweets. This lead to >500,000 impressions for the month.

Many thanks to all particpants, and especially author Scott Regenbogen and moderator Amalia Cochran, who not surprisingly took spots 1 and 2 in the mentions category. Special recognition goes to Michael Zenilman who had the most tweets at 58.

For a transcript, please see our page on symplur.com

May Journal Club!

We are very excited that the article for the May International General Surgery Journal Club is now available with free access for the entire month, courtesy of JAMA Surgery. The article is
Surgery for Diverticulitis in the 21st Century: A Systematic Review, by Scott E. Regenbogen MD MPH, Karin M. Hardiman MD PhD, Samantha Hendren MD MPH, Arden M. Morris MD MPH from the University of Michigan.

We are especially pleased to announce that the first author of the paper, Scott Regenbogen MD MPH (@scottregenbogen) will be participating in the session, which will be moderated by Amalia Cochran MD (@AmaliaCochranMD) from the University of Utah.

As always, please use the hashtag #igsjc in your posts, and consider following @igsjc, the author, and the moderator of the discussion. You can search on twitter for the hashtag #igsjc to see all posts in the discussion, including those posts by people you may not be following. As a pro tip – the tweetdeck website is a great tool for following discussions like the International General Surgery Journal Club.

@scottregenbogen

April #IGSJC Analytics and Transcript

 

 

The second International General Surgery Journal Club was a great success, thanks to the efforts of moderator Christian Jones MD (@jonessurgery) and 1st author Elliott Haut (@elliotthaut). A full transcript of the journal club is available on Storify: https://storify.com/igsjc/april-igsjc-transcript

This month we had 46 participants, 536 tweets (166 original tweets, 165 replies, and 205 retweets), with over 1/2 million impressions. Not too shabby for the second month of this project! @IGSJC now has 294 followers from all over the world, with Seattle being the top city at 6% of followers.