# Medical students’ perceptions of integrating social media into a narrative medicine programme for 5th-year clerkship in Taiwan: a descriptive qualitative study

## TL;DR

This study explores how medical students in Taiwan feel about using Facebook in a narrative medicine program during their clerkship year.

## Contribution

It provides new insights into the perceived strengths and barriers of integrating social media into medical humanities education.

## Key findings

- Students reported both positive and negative experiences with social media integration in narrative medicine.
- Barriers included challenges in writing, sharing, and reacting to narrative medicine stories on social media.
- Participants suggested improvements to enhance the effectiveness of social media in medical education.

## Abstract

The growing demands in integrating digital pedagogies in learning (e.g., social media) contribute to disrupting many fields, including the medical humanities education. However, the strengths and barriers behind social media and medical humanities context are blurred and contradictive. We examined the perceptions of integrating social media – Facebook – into a narrative medicine (NM) programme for 5th -year clerkship in Taiwan.

We used purposive sampling to recruit participants. Sixteen medical students (Female/Male: 7/9) participated in four group interviews. Semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted to explore students’ perceptions and experiences of the social media integrated into the NM programme. We analysed the data using a descriptive thematic analysis with a team-based approach. Data were managed and coded using ATLAS.ti version 9.0.

We identified six main themes: (1) Positive experiences of social media integration; (2) Negative experiences of social media integration; (3) Barriers on writing and sharing NM stories in social media; (4) Barriers on reading NM stories in social media; (5) Barriers on reacting contents in social media; (6) Suggestions for future improvement.

The study revealed the strengths and barriers from medical students’ perceptions, when integrating social media into a NM programme. It is important to match students’ experiences, barriers, and perceptions towards learning. Understanding participants’ suggestions for future improvement are also crucial. With this knowledge, we might better develop the social media integration systems that achieve our desired outcomes based on the medical humanities education curricula.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-024-05255-y.