My current job

Currently I’m working as a physiotherapist on acute wards and I’m part of the rehabilitation unit/team. Rehabilitation clients consist mainly of orthopaedic, trauma and internal medicine patients. The biggest patient groups are knee ja hip replacement patients and cerebrovascular patients. We utilize a range of appropriate assessment procedures and treatment methods and also organize physical exercise sessions, provide education and advice about exercises and movements. I also co-ordinate, supervise and provide clinical education to physiotherapy students. 

Use of different digital tools

The work of physiotherapist is very practical and we rarely use any digital tools as part of our daily practices when we are working with the patients. Big part of our work is also administrative office-based work and for communicating with our colleagues and supervisors we use mainly Teams (Teams replaced Skype as of last year). In Teams we use chat and call features as well as all our important files are stored there too.       

Our team has a private WhatsApp group, although it’s not work related at any form. Mainly we are just sharing funny videos and memes.

Possibilities of different digital tools in the acute ward rehabilitation

First I need to mention that we do not have smart phones at work so we are unable to use any of the social media or other digital tools as part of our daily work. I believe this is so last century, and everyone in our organization should nowadays have smart phones and maybe even iPads. By using at least the following five digital tools we could digitize the whole acute ward rehabilitation.

LinkedIn: Everyone working within the organization should have their own professional LinkedIn page. In LinkedIn everyone could show their knowledge, skills, education and training. Also it’s useful tool for the sharing the information within the organisation and outside of it.

Facebook:  
There are many useful physiotherapy sites on Facebook what we could use and utilize in patients’ rehabilitation.  We also could use it as a branding tool and  e.g. advertise and market any open positions in our unit . 

YouTube and Vimeo:

Both Vimeo and YouTube could be useful  for video and content sharing. In rehabilitation we could use and show e.g. exercise videos for educational purposes. We also could create our own videos and make performance assessments. For patients it can be enlightening to see their own performances on video. Comparing to YouTube Vimeo has better privacy system and it’s easier to use.

TikTok: TikTok we could use as an entertaining version of LinkedIn. We could promote our rehabilitation unit which could have impact for e.g. recruitment; it could have a positive impact for our reputation as a good employer and great team to work with.

Pros and cons of social media

It’s very easy (almost too easy I would say) to communicate through social media. Via social media it’s easy to stay connected with the friends who are living all around the world. Also any kind of information and research is easy and quick to access. As a marketing tool it’s low cost, effortless and effective. It’s reaches huge amount of people and audience within minutes.

With all the benefits social media also come with some (or many?) disadvantages. Communicating via social media is in my opinion superficial; do you really know all the friends and acquaintances your are connecting and communicating with? Some research show that spending too much time in social media it could lead for example to anxiety, depression and cyber bullying. Younger kids also could see some content they are really supposed not to. Social media is also very addictive; if you are not in social media you could feel like you’re missing out of everything. This is called FOMO i.e. Fear of Missing Out. I reckon especially for kids and teenagers there should be some daily limits for social media usage. Adults on the other hand should be responsible for themselves.

Self-evaluation

I have two teenage nephews who keep me updated of the latest social media trends, but still this assignment made me well aware of how old-fashioned I am! Most of the social media tools listed on this assignment I had never even heard of. Most of them are not useful in my work, but I can imagine each of them has it’s own time and place. Some tools of digital organizing I could use in my private life.