 Hi everybody and thank you so much for tuning in. A huge welcome to you if you're new. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already and you'll get some notifications whenever I post a video. So today I wanted to talk all about the use of social media in a positive way. The power of social media and how it can bring you opportunities if used professionally and wisely and I wanted to do a different spin on it because we're always taught at the very start of university or if you're working in healthcare you might already know this and if you don't already know this you're heading into university. There will be warnings about social media and the fact that you can be up against the NMC for inappropriate social media use and it does terrify you and you sort of go through Facebook and everything and you set everything to private and you erase things that you think might be seen in a different way than what it should be. But here no I'm erasing all of that I'm going to show you how the positive use of social media can be really powerful and it can actually bring you so many opportunities if used wisely. So my first thing I'm going to say which I have said before and I'm going to say it again but if you're not on Twitter get on Twitter if you have a Twitter account but you haven't used it you're inactive get using it make use of Twitter because Twitter for me has been by far the best thing I have ever signed up to especially in nursing. So once you get into Twitter and you've signed up you've registered you go out and follow people follow NHS websites doctors nurses chief executives trusts your local trust and then also look on their follow list so people that they follow scroll through their list and see if there's anyone else that you might be interested in following as well and have a look at their page if you're interested in them like the stuff that they post then give them a massive follow as well that will just keep you in touch with the nursing world also follow your university because a lot of universities post on Twitter as well and it makes you feel like part of a community in that sense I love Birmingham City University for this because a lot of lecturers and the university all on Twitter they like they retweet they comment they're motivating they share all of their stuff from the university as well so it's good to be in the know and it just makes you feel really part of the the university family and not like that it's your the lecturer I'm the student like that divide it makes you feel as one like a really nice community so it's really good for that as well then once you have got all of your followers or once you follow whoever you want to follow start tweeting treat your Twitter as as if you're on placement or as if you were a newly qualified nurse or a nurse out there so use it as if it was your work that's how I use mine every now and then I'll post some personal life stuff some little bits to show that I'm not a robot so but mainly my Twitter is literally nurse mode and that's how I think of it I think if I wouldn't say this on placement if I wouldn't say this out in practice as a newly qualified nurse I'm not going to say it on Twitter I'm not going to like it on Twitter I'm not going to retweet it on Twitter that's the way I think of it and that's the way you have to think of Twitter I think is see it from your professional life if that makes sense it's also a really good thing to have as a revision tool which might sound strange but sometimes if I've learned something in lectures or if I'm revising at home I'll do a little poll poll poll how do you say it that sounded really strange I'm sorry like a Twitter poll so why do this sound weird I'm so sorry but anyway you press the little tweet button and there's an option at the bottom it's got like a little it's got like little lines where you have sort of options for the answers for your poll and I could have to stop saying that word so write your tweet write your question whatever question you want to ask or whatever and then you put your answers in the boxes and you create like a little Twitter poll for people to vote on and guess the answer to and that's just it helps it's helped me in the past revise as well because I'm sort of implementing what I've just learned on Twitter and sharing the information that brings me on to next point to share information so if you find a really good policy or guideline you think this is amazing tweet it say this is a great guideline what are your thoughts and start up some conversations with other people that's another really really good thing to do sorry I've just realized that this vlog is turning into Twitter tips and I don't want Twitter tips right now I'm going to do that as a separate vlog so erase everything I've just said but um they're just my little tips okay started anyway you're on Twitter you're loving life you're doing your tweets the use of hashtags I need to I'm going into Twitter things again but anyway the use of hashtags on Twitter is really powerful as well because people search hashtags so if you put a hashtag on your tweet then if people are searching that hashtag they will see your tweet and they can like it comment follow you and spread the message so for example my main ones I tag the student nurse project which is STN project I will hashtag student nurse because anyone looking for student nurse hashtags is going to be for them I will also hashtag general practice or GPN or GPN SNN which is our Twitter page for GP student nurse ambassadors so I will hashtag all of that so then anyone that wants to know more about general practice or student nurse life anything like that they will see the tweet and then they're like oh yeah I've got this information now I'll retweet I'll comment I'll like say things and it's just like a little ripple effect if that makes sense so my point of all of this is if you do all these things people will see your tweets people will see your positivity people will see how good you're doing how well you're doing and it's just nice it's just a really nice community but aside from all of that it might bring you some opportunities so for example I started my blogs and then I started I started blogging originally blogging was my first thing I started and then I thought I'm going to try blogging and then so I turned my blogs into vlogging so I shared my blogs and my blogs and one of the main ones were my general practice nursing blogs and vlogs which I tweeted I used a hashtag I tagged people it got some likes it got some retweets and then I had an inbox from somebody so I had this inbox asking would I come and speak at the general practice nursing conference I know what so I got the opportunity to go and speak at general practice conference and then from that I became a general practice nursing ambassador for the NHS England so I get to go to conferences I go to universities I spread the message about general practice how amazing it is and all of these things and then that has another knock-on knock-on effect because then people like and retweet these things and these posts and then you get other opportunities like I've then gone on from that to do a leadership workshop which was amazing it's completely erased my public fear speaking which some of you already know about because I tweeted about it I instagrammed it I did a whole vlog on it so a few of you do know about that as well from that I did my leadership workshop and then leading on from that I did another talk at the best in practice nursing conference at the NEC Birmingham what and that was all about leadership and how we can all be leaders and things like that which I again I did a vlog about go back and check that one out also from that then got offered a chance to write an article and get published so yeah so Twitter has been amazing to me is what I'm trying to say is if you work Twitter right and if you shine if you show your personality if you share that this amazing profession that you love and you you want these opportunities I mean you have to want these things for me I I didn't know I wanted it until I saw that I could do it and then I was like actually yes I really want to do this I want to get rid of my fear of public speaking so I'm gonna throw myself into it I've had amazing opportunities from it I've met so many amazing people along the way I've met amazing nurses doctors healthcare assistants nurse and associates surgeons people that aren't even really in the profession but they love our NHS are I just it's amazing I've met so many people and I've had so many opportunities I've had invites to things it's just incredible so I just wanted to share the actually with the positive social media use it can be really really beneficial and it all looks amazing on the cv that was the other point sorry it looks amazing on the cv it's going to make you stand out from the crowd and hopefully bag you that job so the next part to this video I wanted to share some stories for you guys that aren't on Twitter some amazing things happened recently actually last year the most recent one was back in October so in October UCAS released a tweet which had a link to the website and it was sort of entitled what do nurses do in this article that they'd written about what nurses do for people to look at it was very very behind with the times it was really simplistic that we were just handmaidens to doctors a lot of lot of nurses on Twitter were very offended by this and to be honest I even I read it it takes a lot for me to get offended by anything but I read it and I was like oh not sure about this and a lot of people retweeted they commented oh UCAS I'm so sorry for you because they did get a bit of a stick from everybody and I felt so sorry for them I thought oh there's poor things whoever's done that tweet oh anyway they then worked alongside some amazing nurses and that are Sienna think to then revamp and rewrite this section because of the power of Twitter the power of social media the power of nurses coming together they created a change they create they made UCAS think about what they'd written and they they changed it and they updated it and actually what it says now is a lot more better but I'm going to put the links below because there is a better explanation of it and I'll actually post the UCAS link as well so you can see what they actually have put there on there now but it was amazing it was really good to see the next one you may have heard of because I think it was shared across all social media sites I think a lot of people knew about this one but there was a nurse who ran a marathon for the Guinness Book of Records she ran for the Guinness Book of Records but they disqualified even though she won that race and she won that Guinness Book of Record title did they disqualified her because she wasn't in the traditional nurses uniform and a lot of people again got very very offended by this oh this went viral this the amount of people that liked retweeted commented because as nurses some people wear their own clothes just depends what type of nurse you are where you're working some people wear scrubs some people wear tunics some people wear dresses there's so much variety in nursing and they disqualified her because she had they disqualified her because she put a script on because that's what she wears in her line of work and so yeah the world went nuts about this and because again because of all of the hype and the likes and the retweets and the backlash from it all Guinness Book of Records had to give her that title so she's actually got that title I'm going to find the link and put it below so you can read more about it but how amazing is that again the power of people coming together using social media in a positive sort of way it's just amazing that we can change things just by positive use of social media so I hope that I've shown you that with the correct use of social media how powerful and amazing it can be and if you're going to use it just use it wisely use it in a professional sense and you'll be amazing and I hope that you have as many amazing opportunities and maybe even a chance to make change out there so go out get on social media use it positively and good luck