The lovely Nurse Romy, an accredited immunisation nurse worked with me to create a guide for talking about vaccination. We combined her clinical expertise with my educational expertise!
A thread 🧵 on talking about vaccination 1/
When should I not engage (eg a no-win)?
Words have the potential to save lives, but they can also do more harm than good. If there is a foreseeable ability to boost confidence in vaccines, consider your message & your method used to communicate. There is no one size fits all 2/
approach when it comes to vaccine communication, talking to people close to you who you have developed relationships with will be more beneficial than engaging with stark anti-vax movements. 3/
How do I engage empathetically?
• Tailor your message for your audience - perceptions about vaccines and their safety differ by political persuasion, culture, age and geography 4/
Acknowledge concerns & scepticism, & offer to answer their questions if you are qualified to do so, avoid judgemental language
• Explain the benefits of getting vaccinated, not just the consequences of not doing it. Focus on keeping their family safe 5/
How do I guide my family & friends to credible content & encourage them to ignore influencer hype?
• Take care to examine the credentials of the source to determine credibility. Big clues are often found in a web address.
ie .edu is associated with an educ institution 6/
such as a university
.gov signifies a government organisation
.org belongs to a non-profit
.com belongs to a FOR-profit
• Does the author of the post have a hidden agenda?
• Is the information updated regularly? 7/
What resources are out there to support me in fact finding?
Picture this: The coronavirus begins across the world. January sees many clinicians thinking "where is this going". By March, we could see this was going to end in global devastation. 2/
By mid-March, headlines began to include "frontline heroes"
Today I want to largely speak to my #simulation & health care educator colleagues. And that is to say:
We have a problem with racism & diversity. Our simulation & health curriculum perpetuates systemic racism.
🧵 In this thread I link research and resources
How? 👇 1/
We continue to use stereotypes as case examples in classroom and simulation settings. In Karani et al (2017) words “perpetuates fallacious stereotypes and racial biases among the next generation of physicians”. bit.ly/370arLW 2/
We use white-skinned manikins &simulated/standardised patients as a default, which misses opportunity to address racism& implicit bias in the training years. This falsely creates the perception that only white-skinned people receive care, &anything outside of this is “extra”. 3/
I was reminded recently that much of the knowledge regarding quality research is not common knowledge. @Melina_Gee today highlights common suggestion of "do their research".
Here's the thing. Doing your research is not actually research.
A thread 🧵
Research is defined as: “systematic investigation into materials & sources in order to establish facts & reach new conclusions”.
This describes Dewey’s method – define problem, determine y problem exists, collect/analyse data, develop conclusions & apply to hypothesis.
Colloquially, we also use the word research as a verb. We use it to describe information or “fact” finding. Even as a verb, the formal definition of research is to “investigate systematically”.