Blogging, tweeting, texting and facebooking have become routine for many physicians as well as many other healthcare professionals. In this issue, Associate Editor Molly Merrill talks to docs who connect with their patients, colleagues and the public via social media (Cover story and P. 23). She discovers, what she already knew, social platforms aren’t just for idle banter.
While physicians advise against connecting directly with individual patients on social media platforms (don’t friend patients) they view social media as a vehicle for providing critical and timely healthcare information and offering a doctor’s take on pressing healthcare issues of the day.
“I started blogging because I thought a blog was a great way to provide commentary from the physician perspective that is often lacking in news reporting today,” Kevin Pho told Healthcare IT News. Pho, a primary care physician in Nashua, N.H., began blogging in 2004. He’s also on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. His recent blog, Why the AMA is in decline, and should doctors care, generated 34 lively comments – so far.
Here at Healthcare IT News, when we think about blogs, geekdoctor, John Halamka’s blogspot, is top of mind. His blog, Life as a Healthcare CIO, never disappoints. Want a good wine to go with dinner? The name of a good vegan restaurant in Kyoto or Edinburgh? A great book? A good climb? He’s your blogger.
Of course, Halamka, an MD and CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and also of Harvard Medical School, blogs most about healthcare technology. His insight on cool technology, on meaningful use, on standards and on governance is second to none. But it’s the blend of the personal and the professional that makes his blog so appealing.
Halamka started blogging on Oct. 21, 2007. To date (June 21, 2011), he’s posted 927 times. His is one model of blogging. There are as many others as there are bloggers.
Social media is here to stay, though it will likely evolve with new offerings we can’t even imagine today. Who would have thought in February 2004 that Facebook – then exclusive to Harvard students – would become such an integral part of the lives of the 600 million active users (according to Wikipedia) it has today? Not even founder Mark Zuckerberg.
It makes sense that physicians are gravitating to new ways of communicating in an era when they can make a stroke diagnosis using an iPhone application and Children’s Medical Center in Dallas tweets updates during a kidney transplant.
A blog Pho posted recently noting that some hospitals ban physicians from social media altogether generated this comment from The Nerdy Nurse: “Shame on any hospital that has their screws wound so tight they do not see the bigger picture. Get a social media policy. Get with the times. And get your doctors on Twitter!”
Well said.
Physicians and others who work in healthcare must be especially careful to uphold federal privacy laws – the spirit as well as the letter. And, it should go without saying that doctors – and the rest of us – should think before we click.
Used with good judgment, social platforms are valuable for conveying information to thousands of people at once, generating discussion, perhaps learning something new, refining an opinion or reframing one, solving a problem or at least tapping the connected to help you see it from a different angle – all in seconds.
There’s the value that so appeals to busy docs.