Andrew Starck, SPT
Addressing a Need:
Exercise interventions are a key part of physical therapy. Our UNC DPT program, as well as other programs, provide students with numerous examples of exercise interventions in our coursework, however, there is always room for more. This capstone project was created to provide current and aspiring DPT students with social media videos of exercise interventions in an engaging format. Each video highlighted a particular exercise intervention with progressions. The videos were created to be short in length, informative, and engaging. The videos were tailored to DPT students and not the general public; this contrasts the existing physical therapy social media landscape where content is made for the general public to “fix this condition with this one exercise.” Content was posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays on the popular social media platforms Instagram and TikTok which are popular among the target demographic.
Background Video:
Included below is a video highlighting the process of this capstone project as well as social media tips for other health professionals.
Products:
https://www.instagram.com/tooeasypt/
https://www.tiktok.com/@tooeasypt
Evaluation:
An evaluation survey was submitted to the UNC DPT Classes of 2023 and 2024. These individuals are among the target demographic of DPT students and provided responses to questions on social media use, physical therapy and social media, and @tooeasypt. The following results are summarized below:
- 82.61% of students use Instagram as their primary social media platform
- 86.96% of students actively follow PT accounts on social media
- 79.26% of students prefer to see educational and entertaining PT social media posts
- 65.22% of students follow @tooeasypt
- 90.48% of students believed learning exercise interventions from @tooeasypt would be beneficial for their upcoming clinical rotations
Self-Assessment:
This capstone project allowed me to combine creativity and social media to educate students further on physical therapy exercise interventions. Creating two weekly videos required extensive planning and execution, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process from start to finish. I have been making various short films and videos since I was young and I was able to utilize my editing and music skills along the way. While I believe social media has its own set of problems, it also provide opportunities and my literature review demonstrated it can be effective for supplementary education. It was never my intention to become a social media “influencer” and I am pleased with the amount of growth @tooeasypt has made. Creating @tooeasypt also allowed me to grow my own exercise intervention set, interact with fellow DPT students, and make valuable networking connections with other physical therapy professionals. I intend to continue to make content for @tooeasypt in the future.
Acknowledgments:
Michael McMorris– Thank you for supporting this project from its inception last year. I appreciate your advice to narrow my focus and create content that will hopefully continue to benefit DPT students in the future. Your creativity, humor, and personality are some of the many ways you have excelled as an educator.
Joshua Torrey– Thank you for being on board with this project since I mentioned it to you in clinic. Your feedback has helped me connect better with DPT students directly and I value your viewpoints from a physical therapist’s perspective.
Julie Starck– Thank you for providing key feedback in professional expertise in social media marketing and engagement strategies. You have been a key member of this project and I appreciate your support.
UNC DPT Students– Thank you for support on this capstone project. I have enjoyed interacting with some of you on @tooeasypt and I hope this project has helped in some small way. If you ever see me out and about, I’d be happy to sign an autograph or take a photo with you.
Too easy.
4 Responses to “Social Media as Supplementary Education for DPT Students”
Dan Thomas
Andrew,
I will admit, I have loved watching your videos on Instagram. They are informative, high quality and capture your humor. It also addresses a topic that I frequently brought up during classes that discussed practice issues or outreach. I have often thought that our profession is not using social media platforms to their potential. More often, I have believed we should be using Instagram to reach new patients or the general public; however, you made a great point that there are already content creators doing this, and I agree that they often involve “click bait” topics. Watching your background video was extreme enlightening because I am sure there were people that thought your project was easy. Yet, to the contrary, your project took a lot of research, time management skills, digital expertise, physical therapy knowledge, drive and the ability to adapt to constant feedback. In the end, I am sure it was heavily time consuming. I hope you continue this channel, as I know it was not your intention to be an influencer, but it has so much opportunity to grow and fill a void. Congrats on an amazing project!
Patricia Callison
Andrew,
This capstone is so awesome. I really enjoy looking at your Instagram page; it gives me a lot of great ideas to use in the clinic. I think this type of content really does fill in a gap on social media for PT students. I follow a couple of other Instagram accounts that are geared toward PT students, but the content on those pages is more centered around navigating the struggles of school, such as time management, studying for board exams, and applying for jobs. While this is useful, it is only really relevant to individuals while they are still in school. Your page stands out because it includes tangible content that can be directly applied in clinical practice, and can be used as a resource well beyond PT school.
One of my favorite things about your posts was the dry humor mixed in with facial expressions, animations, and sound effects. These touches create a perfect mix of professional, funny, entertaining, and useful. I also liked how the exercises were not linked to a certain pathology, such as “try this exercise for patients with low back pain”. I think just showing the exercise with progressions or regressions without associating it with a specific diagnosis gives viewers the ability to use clinical judgement to apply the exercises to various situations in which it may be appropriate. In this way, it indirectly allows students to develop their clinical reasoning skills.
I can tell you really enjoy the process of making these videos, and I hope you can continue to make posts because it serves as a great resource to use in the clinic ~and beyond~.
#tooeasy
Patricia
Mike McMorris
Andrew,
It has been truly rewarding to see this project come together from the first conversations we had during class to the full expression of your idea through social media. Certainly a great example of taking something you’re interested in and creating an evidenced based, meaningful capstone project to share with others. The videos on Instagram and TikTok were interesting, informative, clever, relevant, and professional quality! I think you have a great idea here and have filled in a gap of need with a fun and informative approach. Depending on how much time you want to put into creating content and/or making yourself available I could see room for growth with a podcast or live stream for PT students.
In short, great job Andrew, love what you have done with this idea from concept to final products. You made it look Too Easy! (sorry, couldn’t resist)
Have a great day!!
McMike
Rachel Silver
Andrew,
I have enjoyed watching your social media account this semester and seeing all of your posts!! I had no idea there was existing research related to the use of social media as a supplementary adjunct to education, but I thought you did a good job of highlighting current research and demonstrating how you utilized the research findings to tailor your social media approach. I was impressed with your technological capabilities and how you modified your approach throughout the semester based on the feedback you got from Instagram. It is interesting to me that so many other disciplines have research related to social media and educational uses but nothing for PT – have you considered doing any research with this subject in the future?
I follow a number of PT social media accounts on Instagram, but as you mentioned, they are largely tailored to parents (many of the accounts I follow are pediatric-based) or patients. I certainly think that we could all benefit from having social media accounts more tailored to physical therapy. I have toyed with the idea of creating a peds PT-related social media account as a way to provide free educational resources to parents in the future, but now you have me thinking that maybe I should make one catering to peds therapists instead! I also agree that even now exercise intervention is certainly an area we could all use more education in, and I do often find myself in the clinic trying to come up with something new for a patient to try to build my “exercise library” as my first CI called it. I will certainly come back to these videos, and I think you have tailored them in a way that makes it easy to quickly find what I am looking for!
I look forward to seeing what you continue to post in the future!
Rachel