Professional identity conference to be held via Twitter

The Education Innovation Institute at the Medical College of Georgia will host its first Twitter conference on professional identity formation Feb. 25.

The conference, “Peering into the Looking Glass: Professionalism and Professional Identity Formation in Health Professions Education,” is an exciting opportunity for students, faculty, and staff.

“Because of the pandemic, the way people have been doing conferences changed. There is a demand for people to meet and talk and exchange ideas,” said Dr. Marcel D’Eon, director of the institute.

A Twitter conference opens this area of research on professional identity formation to a worldwide audience for presenters to display their research.

“Instead of looking at PowerPoint slides, the material, the text, images, videos, whatever media [presenters] have, are sent out in regular tweets over the 10- or 15-minute process of the presentation. The presenter’s Tweets are sent to the conference organizer, then they are retweeted on the conference hashtag,” he said.

From there, the virtual “attendees” can follow #MCGConf2021PIF to read and interact with the presenters.

D’Eon said the main benefit is that it’s all recorded and archived.

“You can go back later,” he said. “The questions can keep coming for hours and days later as people have to access the archive.”

Although the tweets are free, there are opportunities to financially support the conference.

“People don’t have to register or pay to access; they can follow the conference hashtag for free. We’ve requested that they register so that we can have some idea of who to expect. There’s an option for both presenters and participants to pay an optional fee to financially support the conference,” he said.

There are five presentations scheduled with topics ranging from disability curriculum in medical education to professional identity formation of medical students in the middle of a health care crisis.

To learn more or register, visit the conference homepage. You can also follow #MCGConf2021PIF on Twitter.