TOTB-06: THE USE OF AN ONLINE COLLABORATIVE WORKSPACE TO IMPROVE THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ON A CORE SURGICAL CLERKSHIP
Thomas Lee Gillespie, MD, Bianka N Bubic; Creighton University School of Medicine

What problem in education is addressed by this work?:
Texting, social media, instant messaging, and other rapid and less formal means of communication are ubiquitous today, but the level of comfort with these communication styles can differ significantly between generations. The current generation of students prefer accessibility, immediate feedback, and authentic connections with their educators, but may feel intimidated or unsure of how to communicate effectively and professionally in their clinical learning environment. Additionally, educators want to meet students where they are at, form lasting relationships and facilitate effective communication while maintaining boundaries.

Describe the intervention:
The surgery clerkship had all members of the rotation subscribe to a free online collaborative work space which has been shown to be successful in thriving technology centric work environments to promote effective communication, create supportive venues to ask questions, and to disseminate information. Primarily we used this tool to give students immediate and ongoing written feedback, allow the students to ask questions about the structure and organization of the surgery clerkship, and to communicate with the Clerkship Director personal needs on private channels. We also performed anonymous surveys for continuous student feedback, created separate threads for question bank challenges that kept students accountable for their study habits, and shared meaningful experiences while on the clerkship as an exercise in habitual group reflection.

Describe how this intervention could be applied at other institutions. Please specifically comment on identified barriers that could exist and how they could be overcome:
This intervention could be used by almost all clerkships, residency programs and faculty development communities to affect a collaborative work environment. Some might feel that this communication tool could be intrusive and "yet another" distraction in the work environment. Proper utilization of filters, notifications and communication status can be used to overcome these impingements.