Integrating Geriatrics Knowledge into a Medical Student Clerkship Using Twitter Poll

Abstract

A controlled, prospective, 2-year cohort observational study was conducted to test whether weekly geriatric questions delivered through Twitter Poll could improve geriatrics knowledge during an internal medicine clerkship for third-year medical students. Pre- and post-rotation test results used a modified University of California, Los Angeles geriatric knowledge test that included questions linked to 26 Association of American Medical Colleges geriatric competencies for medical students. Data were analyzed using a general linear model repeated-measure design and Student t-test. The primary outcome showed that Twitter Poll participants had more than twice the geriatrics knowledge (p = .002) than students who did not use Twitter Poll. Subset analysis showed different test performances according to sex (p = .03), training site (p = .002), and cohort (p = .003). This study is the first demonstration of Twitter Poll efficacy in medical education and raises questions about whether it could be even more effective if linked to spaced timing of didactic content or supported by annotated answers to geriatrics questions. J Am Geriatr Soc 66:2389-2393, 2018.

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