How to get the best out of twitter chats and CPD


Saturday 18th August 2012 by @AgencyNurse

A guide to using Twitter Chats for CPD

by @AgencyNurse

 

For most of us twitter is fast becoming a great new way to meet fellow nurses we would never meet in real life, explore best practices with each other and join in with a very vibrant aspect of the nursing community.

Twitter chats are a great way to focus some time with likeminded nurses, flex our professional development brains and chat - things most professional nurses value.
 

Twitter chats and CPD…
 
Is just being on a chat worthy of an entry in your portfolio for the 30 mins or an hour towards your PREP and count as towards CPD?

The NMC PREP handbook states that PREP should help you to:

• keep up to date with new developments in practice
• think and reflect for yourself
• demonstrate that you are keeping up to date and developing your practice.

 

The NMC PREP handbooks states “The learning activity which you undertake to meet this standard must be relevant to your practice. However, there is no such thing as approved Prep (CPD) learning activity.” So if the Twitter chat is relevant to your practice here are a few things you can do expand and clearly create and document valuable time spent:
 

1. Be prepared, it's likely you are joining in a chat because it relates to your particular nursing interest, hopefully you'll have access to chat details in advance (we have a calendar here that either gives you details of diarised chats or allows you to contact some of the hosts for more details). Often there are links to content to set the scene for the chats, sometimes chats cover news items or topical events ... So, read up, document the content and time you have researched and be prepared to join in the chat or even just listen in, known not very affectionately as lurking.
 

2. During the chat either get involved by taking part in the discussion, or at the very least follow those that have interesting views and comments during the chat, maybe favourite some of their tweets to refer to later. Take a note on comments and people that got you thinking, even use a pen and paper as things move quite quickly sometimes.
 

3. After the chat many chat hosts will create a transcript that will allow you to go over the chat in your own pace, this is a good time to reflect on what you missed and add to the value you can gain from those taking part. It will also allow you to follow nurses that you think you might like to continue the discussion with, maybe your points of you were similar, or very different, both great reasons to follow each other on twitter.
 

4. Write your own summary of the chat to aid reflection on what you have learnt, you may even like to blog or video blog about it, or simply print it out and add it to your portfolio, or even submit it to WeNurses ! It is clear in the NMC PREP handbook that you do need to document your learning “You must document, in your profile, your relevant learning activity and the way in which it has informed and influenced your practice. Although there is no approved format for the profile and you can meet the Prep (CPD) standard in many different ways” You can do this in many ways – why not explore some new media ? However we've have suggested a few things that you might like to include in your reflection:
 

· Why did you think this chat would be relevant to you, what did you hope to gain?

· What twists and turns did the chat take, how did opinions differ from participants vary?

· Did you pick up any ideas to discuss with colleagues later, or even change the way you currently nurse?

· Finally include why you found about it valuable and relevant to your practice
 

If you take this approach the time spent around a chat may be many more times the length of the chat itself, rather than just clocking up the chat time, go the extra mile, explore and document all the value you can from being part of the twitter chatting nurses.
 

Of course with archived chats you can go through the process without even being on the chat itself, we have a list of growing archived chats with topics that may be of interest to you, looking at historical chats might give you a good feeling for how live chats work, helping you to add value to the other participants without jumping in head first.

So don't worry about attendance certificates or missing chats, just use the content that you and fellow nurses create during the chats and create your own value and evidence for your own CPD. For further advice on CPD please read the NMC PREP Handbook.
 

Very simply here is a guide/form you can fill in to add to your portfolio once completed:
 
Word Version / PDF Version (updated 27/04/2015)

 

We hope this helps, happy twitter nurse chatting and professional development!





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@HALIMATJIMOH
13 October 2021 09:47
Health is wealth
@pharmerfour
15 November 2015 08:35
Digging up an old blog, but I think this is going to be very useful for the Australian WePharmerOz participants soon....
@LisaxDx2072
13 November 2014 17:10
Great! Thanks for the resource and for sorting it so quickly :)
@WeNurses
13 November 2014 10:48
Sorry Lisa, thanks for your comment, all working now :)
@LisaxDx2072
13 November 2014 10:26
Hi, I have tried to open the links to the Word and PDF versions of the form for use in portfolios however both links will not open. I've tried on other laptops and its the same on all. Please can you help? Great resource by the way! Lisa

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