WU Nephrology Represented in 2019 Nephrology Social Media Collective Internship

Madhuri Ramakrishnan, MD, first-year nephrology fellow

The Nephrology Social Media Collective (NSMC) has announced the members of its 2019 internship, three of whom are affiliated with WU’s Division of Nephrology:  Dr. Madhuri Ramakrishnan, a first-year nephrology fellow; Dr. Yasar Caliskan, a visiting researcher in the Sanjay Jain Laboratory, and Dr. Sam Krishnamoorthy, a former nephrology fellow.

Yarar Caliskan, MD, visiting researcher in the Sanjay Jain Laboratory

Acknowledging the ever-increasing importance of social media and how it is changing the practice of nephrology, the NSMC internship trains nephrology health care professionals in the art of communication through social media.

The goal of the NSMC is to cultivate leaders in medicine by instilling confidence, knowledge, competence, and professionalism in the newer forms of communication.

Sam Krishnamoorthy, MD, former nephrology fellow

The NSMC internship was established in 2015 with seven international faculty members, which included educators, clinicians and researchers in nephrology.  The 2019 class consists of 42 interns from 11 countries; these 42 were chosen from 114 applicants.

After being accepted, interns are required to have a Twitter account and are expected to contribute several hours each month for NSMC internship-related activities.  The curriculum requires participation in a variety of projects at #NephJC, NephMadness, Renal Fellow Network, NephSim, and GlomCon, in addition to their own projects.

The framework of the curriculum is:

NephJC. Interns are expected to be regular participants in NephJC; they will write summaries, create visual abstracts, curate summaries of the chat, and ultimately host a chat.

Slack Backchannel. Interns will be invited into a private Slack group with NSMC faculty and advisors.  In this backchannel, where much of the learning and mentoring occurs, both good and bad uses of social media are discussed.

Special Projects. Interns start off the year by writing a blog post. After that, they will create support and promotional content for NephMadness.  During the summer, interns will write a blog post for Renal Fellow Network, NephJC or another channel.

Didactic Sessions. The infrastructure of GlomCon is used to stream lectures to the interns (i.e. Zoom Conferences).  This includes lectures on nephrology social media, professionalism, using social media for academic advancement.

On Twitter, follow Drs. Ramakrishnan @MadMagicDoc, Caliskan @yasar_caliskan, and Krishnamoorthy @beans_sam, , and NSMC @NSMCInternship.  See the chart below for the proposed 2019 curriculum structure.  For the complete teaching curriculum, see here.

NSMC proposed structure of the 2019 curriculum