Author Proof Forum Friending Facebook? A Minicourse on the Use of Social Media by Health Professionals DANIEL R. GEORGE,PHD, MSC Introduction: Health professionals are working in an era of social technologies that empower users to generate content in real time. This article describes a 3-part continuing education minicourse called “Friending Facebook?” undertaken at Penn State Hershey Medical Center that aimed to model the functionality of current technologies in health care and encourage discussion about how health professionals might responsibly utilize social media. Methods: Fifteen health professionals participated in the course and provided written evaluation at its conclusion. The course instructor took field notes during each of the 3 classes to document emergent themes. Results: The course received uniformly positive evaluations, and participants identified several current tools perceived as being potentially useful in their professional lives, including news aggregators, Google Alerts, and—if used responsibly—social networking sites such as Facebook. Discussion: Developing innovative and appropriate programming that teaches to emerging social media tech- nologies and ideologies will be crucial to helping the health professions adapt to a new, networked era. Medical institutions would do well to foster interprofessional—and perhaps even intergenerational—conversations to share not only the dangers and risks of social media, but also the opportunities that are emerging out of a rapidly evolving online world. Key Words: social media; continuing education; technology; networks; self-guided learning Introduction Mark Zuckerburg, CEO of Facebook, was named the 2010 TIME person of the year for wiring 550 million people— almost a twelfth of humanity—together into a single net- work. Zuckerburg’s imprint on the 21st century, as well as the rapid proliferation of other “social media” technologies such as Twitter, signals a new reality for the health care professions. Social media tools—such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and myriad free blogging platforms that emerged during the last decade’s transition toward applications that enable user-generated content 1 —are connecting humanity and enabling real-time sharing of information, and should therefore no longer be ignored or minimized by any profes- sion. For health professionals, the question of whether we Disclosures: Author reports none. Dr. George: Assistant Professor, Department of Humanities, Penn State College of Medicine. Correspondence: Daniel R. George, 500 University Drive, Hershey, PA 17033; e-mail: drg21@psu.edu. C  2011 The Alliance for Continuing Medical Education, the Society for Academic Continuing Medical Education, and the Council on Continuing Medical Education, Association for Hospital Medical Education.  Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/chp.20129 should embrace social media is seemingly being succeeded by the question of how we ought to behave on social me- dia. Even so, the culture of medicine (which tends to value privacy, confidentiality, one-on-one interactions, and profes- sional conduct) and that of social media (which tends to value sharing and openness, connection, transparency, and informality) make integration of the two fields a distinct challenge. While much has been written about unprofessional con- duct in the use of social media by medical students, resi- dents, and other health care professionals, 2−7 and breaches of the patient–physician boundary on social networking sites such as Facebook, 8 less has been written about the positive potential of social media to create new and rich opportu- nities for self-directed lifelong learning, professional net- working, and thought leadership. 9 At Penn State Hershey Medical Center, I have designed and led a 3-part continuing education course sponsored by the Department of Humani- ties called “Friending Facebook?” to encourage a conversa- tion about the integration of social media in medicine, and model how current and future health professionals might responsibly use these tools to benefit themselves and the patients and communities they serve. This article provides a descriptive overview of the course, shares the results of course evaluations, and explores how lessons learned may in- form similar efforts to educate health professionals on social media. JOURNAL OF CONTINUING EDUCATION IN THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS, 31(3):216–220, 2011