Simple Technology Facilitating Complex Communities: A New Paradigm for Interprofessional Education?

The Internet, and social media in particular, have in many ways made the world a smaller place. One can share their thoughts and stories with people on the other side of the globe in an instant. Social media is often thought of in this context - connecting people at great distances in a visceral way that until fairly recently was pure science fiction. But one can also use these tools to build a strong local network and create networks to, and within local community environs. Used locally within existing communities or by linking disparate communities within a region, social media tools can help facilitate virtual face-to-face networking in a world full of timetable conflicts and "too busy to stop" professionals. This paper will tell the story of how one interprofessional education (IPE) research project came to realize that exploiting the potential of social networking technology would ultimately create the effective relationships and synergies necessary for foundational change in real life context. Genuine collaboration through social networking at the faculty level was the necessary component that ultimately embedded interprofessional (IP) competencies in health professional education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]