Educational Impact of #IDJClub, a Twitter-Based Infectious Diseases Journal Club

Journal clubs have been an enduring mainstay of medical education, and hosting these on social media platforms can expand accessibility and engagement. We describe the creation and impact of #IDJClub, an infectious diseases (ID) Twitter journal club.

We launched #IDJClub in October 2019. Using the account @IDJClub, an ID physician leads a 1-hour open-access Twitter discussion of a recent publication. All participants use the hashtag #IDJClub. Sessions started monthly, but increased due to demand during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We used Symplur 's Healthcare Hashtag project to track engagement of #IDJClub per 60-minute discussion plus the following 30 minutes to capture ongoing conversations. We also conducted an online anonymous survey using Likert scales and open-ended questions to assess educational impact.

In its first 20 months, 31 journal clubs were held, with medians of 42 (interquartile range [IQR], 28.5-60) participants and 312 (IQR, 205-427.5) tweets per session. 134 participants completed the survey, of whom 39% were ID physicians, 19% pharmacists, 13% ID fellows, and 10% medical residents. Most agreed or strongly agreed that #IDJClub provided clinically useful knowledge (95%), increased personal confidence in independent literature appraisal (72%), and was more educational than traditional journal clubs (72%). The format addressed several barriers to traditional journal club participation such as lack of access, subject experts, and time.

#IDJClub is an effective virtual journal club, providing an engaging, open-access tool for critical literature appraisal that overcomes several barriers to traditional journal club participations while fostering connectedness within the global ID community.