The Use of Social Media by Medical Librarians for Inclusive Engagement in the Management of HIV/AIDS in Nigeria University Teaching Hospitals

Introduction

The success of every establishment depend largely on the availability of information at its disposal. University teaching hospitals are charged with the responsibility of providing useful information to its community and for caring for their patients. They depend on the services of the library to be able to meet with this demand. The library itself in modern times largely depends on information and communication technologies (ICTs) in order to satisfy the information needs of both medical staff, students, and the community. ICT has evolved, diversified, and synthesized to leverage a wide variety of tasks in the medical field as such, the fastest means of communication that can get to the intended public mostly would be sought after. Access to current and useful information is an integral part of national development, whilst ICT such as SM plays a vital role in leveraging university teaching hospital objectives in ensuring that adequate and swift response to healthcare service delivery is practiced (Ochonogor & Okite-Amughoro 2018). To achieve this objective, both the medical practitioners, librarians, students, patients, and the stakeholders must be inclusively engaged and ensure a shared and satisfactory obligations.

The use of SM has however made the work environment a community pivot, or a rallying point, rather than the solitary tedium that has retarded learning, communication, health service delivery and advancement, cooperation or collaboration, and community support in the past. The term social media is broad and constantly evolving (Ventola, 2014) and generally referred to as internet-based tools that allow individuals and communities to gather and communicate; to share information, ideas, personal messages, images and other contents; and, in some cases, to collaborate with other users in real time; (Chauhan, & Coffin, 2012; ASHP, 2012; Duke, Anstey, Carter, Gosse, Hutchens & Marsh, 2017; Lambert, Barry, & Stokes 2012; Von Muhlen & Ohno-Machado, 2012; Ventola 2014) to sustain and ensure inclusivity within the health system. Such prevalent usage of SM has triggered the growing need for a corresponding and enhanced awareness of the field upon which groups forming a social network should be based. Hence, sustaining the group by soliciting information from all its members especially those who are vast in topics of discussion.