Some physicians may be hesitant to participate in social media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter.
Well, get over it.
Great post by pediatrician Bryan Vartabedian who addresses this topic. Indeed, physicians have lost control of the online message, especially with, according to recent data, 60+ percent of patients visiting the web first when looking for health information.
Instead, anti-vaccine proponents and homeopaths have embraced the Internet, and now exert tremendous influence on patients. We doctors have no one to blame but ourselves for being so slow to get online.
For example, consider this suggestion by Dr. Vartabedian:
There are 60,000 members of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Every pediatrician fights vaccine misinformation, especially as they relate to autism. Consider the fact that the first two pages of a Google search for vaccines and autism are polluted with anti-vaccine propaganda driven by a loud, socially-savvy minority. If every AAP member wrote a myth-dispelling post concerning immunization just once a year, Google would be ruled by reason.
That is the single best idea I’ve heard in awhile. I hope organized medicine is listening.
Going forward, doctors need to incorporate social media into their practice, or better yet, learn some basic search engine optimization techniques for their websites. Without these skills, the medical profession risks losing further influence of the online message, as more patients will be persuaded by charlatans, who now rule the web’s health information.
Related posts:
- Why doctors and nurses should engage in social media
- Do doctors who use social media prescribe more medications?
- How should the FDA regulate the social media advertising of drugs?
- Hospitals are using social media, like Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, for advertising to patients
- Tips for doctors who use Twitter
- Talking health care reform and social media in medicine
- Scenes from Blog World Expo 2009 and the future of medical social media
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Dr. Kev,
I agree there’s noone to blame by physicians themselves. Many (most) doctors don’t want the engagement with their patients outside of the exam room. Medicine traditionally has been paternalistic and today’s practitioners are so busy, they’re afraid of having to spend the time and defend themselves at every keystroke. It’ll be docs like you that help keep traditional medicine afloat with your blog and outreach and maybe even PR and media consultants like me who help them get on their way in their comfort zone in SM.
Dr. Kevin, can we clone you? I’ve become a big advocate of being an active participant in your health and health care – that advocacy predates, yet is heavily influenced by, my experience managing treatment for my own little medical nasty-gram, breast cancer, last year. Doctors MUST engage with patients, but patients need to engage with their health care providers, too. Ask questions. Look for relevant, reliable information to craft those questions. Demand answers, and listen to those answers. I agree with Sue’s comment above that it’s up to media and PR consultants to encourage and facilitate those conversations. By any means necessary.
Same with the McDonald’s coffee suit. Google the phrase, and you get hit after hit after hit from “consumer attorneys” with misinformation and propaganda about the case. You have to do a fair amount of work to find a fair asessment of the incident.
I totally agree! Let’s get organized, med peeps – modern day public health initiatives may = expert blog rallies to influence the conversation on medical matters. We let the quacks get a head start. Now it’s time to strike back to save our patients!
In the UK, we recently had a scare story about the cervical cancer jab. The google results were full of ‘cancer jab kills girl, 14′ stories as a result – with no other stories in the top 10 results.
I’ve been getting people to link to the official UK National Health Service (NHS) advice on the subject. With about 25 links added in blogs, UK papers and other websites, we’ve got 1 NHS page at position 4 and 1 at position 11. They were previously not in the top 200.
Anyway, this shows what you can do. Of course, more links to the relevant pages would help, so if anyone reading this would like to take part, you can find out the full details here, including background and pages to target.
I plan to write up the results in a few days, so I hope you won’t mind if I come back and let you know the full analysis of what happened.
Absolutely Kevin! What we (doctors) are doign isn’t working. We are so caught up in tradition and the “when I was a resident” attitude that we can’t see out way out.
Change is inevitable and necessary. We need to reach out in different ways and re-connect with our patients and our communities.
I didn’t understand facebook and twitter – but I just jumped right in and I am starting to get it!
Thank you for leading the way!
Yes, we need more and better medical information on the web to marginalize all of the junk science. But the other side of this equation is the repicient, the consumer. Without greater health and science literacy, the facts will continue to matter little.
I agree somewhat with Dr. Oestreicher’s comment but there’s more to this issue than just consumer health literacy. I remember when my mother was diagnosed with cancer five years ago spending hours online looking for something, anything that would give alternative options to the 6-month treatment and prognosis delivered by her doctors. When the feeling of hope is only a Google search away, it’s incredibly tempting to believe what you read.