Mayo Clinic and healthcare social media

They say you need to learn from the best.

And some healthcare social media denizens are having a shot at that through Mayo Clinic’s first healthcare social media residency program that kicked off at its Jacksonville, Florida campus Wednesday. The two-day program aims to teach people how to harness the power of social media within their healthcare organizations. Mayo Clinic is widely regarded to be a pioneer in the field of healthcare social media.

The program also allows beginners to get the feel of social media and use self-study preparation programs to get comfortable with the subject matter. But the program also requires “social media residents” to participate in “public hands-on activities using online social platforms to develop comfort and confidence” according to a description of the program.

The goal at the end of the course is manifold and includes the ability of program participants to:

apply Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogging) best practices utilized at Mayo Clinic at their organization
select which social media tools are most appropriate for their organization
identify components of an appropriate social media strategy
explain how social media tools can help improve their organization;recognize ways social media can help improve patient and employee communications;.

The tuition is discounted for members of Mayo Clinic’s social network, Connect. Two social media residency programs are planned for each Mayo Clinic campus with the next one scheduled to be on April 28-29 at the Rochester, Minnesota headquarters.

Here are some interesting tweets that emerged from the first day of the program: