Social Media
Social media has become a regular site of new medical education content in radiology, especially on Twitter. There are two major uses of Twitter in academic medicine right now.
Professional interaction
Professional interaction on Twitter and other social media sites has drastically decreased the barrier for communication between medical practitioners at all levels. That is, it is much easier to interact with people across the hierarchy. So it’s much easier now for medical students and people interested in medicine to approach more senior residents, fellows, and faculty. This leads to higher quality information and better mentorship of junior trainees who may be interested in radiology. Don’t be afraid to follow senior radiologists and interact with them on their feeds and even DM them if desired.
Medical education
A number of high quality physicians produce free open medical education materials for radiology and then post them on Twitter. A lot of time this amounts to posting unknown or interesting cases and stimulating discussion among followers. This often leads to fun banter and education in a unique and modern environment. Have time to check your phone? You have time to get a little bit of radiology education. These posts are often under hashtags that point to their educational content (see box).
Feel free to jump right in and reply to any of these cases, although you should make sure you understand the rules of engagement. Many posters don’t want you to put the answer to the case until it has been officially posted 24-48 hours after the original, so as to not spoil the case for new visitors. In those cases, you can often post the clue in the form of a gif.
Who to follow
There are a lot of radiology education people you might follow online. I recommend you explore on your own and add people you share interests with. Don’t forget to add a variety of people to increase the sphere of people you interact with. That’s one of the great things about Twitter.
Ryan Peterson
Ryan is a neuroradiologist at Emory University and tweets a weekly unknown neuroradiology case. Replies are often in gif form and hilarious.
Judy Gadde
Judy is a pediatric neuroradiologist at Emory University and also tweets a weekly unknown neuroradiology case. These cases emphasize pediatric neuroradiology.
William T. O’Brien, Sr.
Judy is a pediatric neuroradiologist at Emory University and also tweets a weekly unknown neuroradiology case. These cases emphasize pediatric neuroradiology.
ASNR
The American Society of Neuroradiology is a source of all things Neuroradiology, including updates on current papers as well as some unknown cases.
ASHNR
This is the Official Twitter feed of the American Society of Head and Neck Radiology (ASHNR). It features interesting head and neck cases as well.
You can always follow me as well
You can always follow me as well, but I don’t pretend to have as much educational content as these folks. I’ll usually post recent published articles and sometimes updates to this website or our Youtube channel.