It’s been said that 80 percent of success is showing up, but that’s simply not true. Showing up is not enough. Showing up reliably and giving your best is not enough. You’ve got to be seen showing up. So, how do you raise your professional visibility? Here are five tips for the modern physician leader. If you are a traditionalist, please keep an open mind. The strategies below aren’t that …
Patients have a lot of choices when it comes to physicians. Making sure your online profile is up to date, complete, and contains these five items will improve the chances that a website visitor will become a patient.
Create a personal connection. Having good rapport with patients is important, and that process starts before patients ever walk in the door.
How often have you seen a physician bio that only contains a single, …
Early this month, Joanna Gaines, co-host of HGTV’s popular Fixer Upper, shared her pregnancy news with the world via a baby bump photo and an ultrasound, both posted to Instagram. The congratulations began pouring in from excited fans. But the conversation took a dark turn when a physician commented that the ultrasound appeared to …
Twitter is a communication platform, and, therefore, it is a neutral medium. It’s not the medium itself, but how you use the medium that makes Twitter “good” or “bad.” In my five years of being an anonymous and five months of being a named individual on Twitter, I have come to realize that different people use Twitter for different purposes. In …
The ALS ice bucket challenge, better known as #ALSIceBucketChallenge or #icebucketchallenge, was almost the perfect storm for viral fundraising. In my course, Designing Health Campaigns Using Social Media at Tufts University, we analyzed why the challenge went viral.
Not surprisingly, given its popularity, my students had all heard about it and watched challenge videos. About half had done it. Some researched amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, and …
At the end of a long day at my medical practice, I am sitting at my computer catching up with friends via Facebook. Suddenly, a notification pops up: one of the patients I saw today has sent me a friend request. I know that the ACP, AMA and every other physician organization recommends strongly that doctors not connect with patients via social media, so I quickly click to decline the …
An anesthesiologist at a California hospital pasted stickers simulating a mustache and teardrops on the face of a hospital employee while she was having surgery on a finger.
According to the Los Angeles Times, the doctor said, “I thought she would think this is funny and she would appreciate it.”
And if that wasn’t bad enough, a “nursing attendant” took a photograph.
The patient, who said she had to quit her job …
If one searches for “online patient communities” over 19 million Internet sites are found. Online patient communities (OPCs) may exist as subgroups of social media sites, non-profit organizations, and increasingly as part of websites of healthcare organizations and stand alone sites.
Online communities are now becoming a rich source of information gleaned from their discussions. This information will be increasingly used for both clinical and commercial purposes. I will touch on themes which …
A few weeks ago I was following an online discussion conducted by a widely followed health site.
During the discussion, they had a physician who was giving out wellness advice to users via Twitter.
That physician had one tweet in particular that terrified me.
As the above screenshot shows, one tweet mentioned that when in doubt regarding …
How should doctors behave online? This is a funny question, isn’t it?
Medical establishment loves rules and hierarchy. Social media does not. Social media levels the playing field of who gets to talk; it gives real caregivers a voice. That’s very cool.
This is just a guess, but I suspect there are many more acts left to play out in the healthcare social media play.
The American College of Physicians and the Federation …
The General Medical Council (UK) published new guidelines that state, “If you identify yourself as a doctor in publicly accessible social media, you should also identify yourself by name. Any material written by authors who represent themselves as doctors is likely to be taken on trust and may reasonably be taken to represent the views of the profession more widely.” This has …
During a routine office visit, I was discussing activities and extracurriculars with a bright 10-year old girl. She loved talking about her dance team, gymnastics, and her new hobby of horseback riding.
Towards the end of our conversation, however, she said something that surprised me: “And, I am addicted to Pinterest.”
I turned to her mother, who was also in the exam room, and asked, “Did you know she is on Pinterest? …
It’ll be no surprise to the readers of this blog that physicians’ use of Twitter and other social media has been exploding over the last couple of years. But it may surprise you to know how hard it is to really analyze that data.
Last year Dr. Katherine Chretien of the VA Medical Center in Washington, DC, published an eye-opening study in a JAMA letter. Until that point, …
So you’ve decided to take the plunge (or at least, dip your toes) into the Twitterverse. Congratulations! Welcome to a vibrant interactive community. You’ll find plenty of different personalities here and lots of opinions. But if you are like I was back in January 2011, you currently have no idea how to actually use Twitter, let alone how a physician might want to use it.
There are plenty of places to …
Does your medical practice allow anybody to post links and comments on your Facebook page?
The short answer is yes. We do. Why? Because we think allowing patient to post links and commenting on our practice’s Facebook page helps us achieve these four things:
1. It encourages communication.
2. It allows us to address issues that we would otherwise have a hard time addressing.
3. Other patients will benefit by reading the discussions.
4. We …
Looking ahead to the next several months, I’ve found myself frequently wondering how many physicians will make this their year to take the plunge and join an online social network. There are significant advantages that can be gained for doctors who embrace social media. Here are five ways you and your practice can benefit from such professional connections.
1. Finding a better job. The business of the health care economy continues to …
There have been a couple of widely-publicized cases recently of physicians divulging patient information in social media. I’m sure the doctors involved did not intend to violate patient privacy.
While there are several excellent guidelines and policies on this topic, there isn’t a whole lot of practical advice, so here are my tips to help you avoid privacy violations (I hope this is the beginning of a conversation …
by Phil Baumann, RN
What assets do physicians nurse practitioners have which they can share online? It’s knowledge.
With today’s technologies, medicine and nursing care online are obviously limited – perhaps in the future we’ll have technologies which more robustly extend traditional care.
When patients seek information online, they’re usually looking for answers to questions. Now they may be seeking answers from different sources, but if they could find …
My friend and colleague Katherine Chretien has a provocative op-ed in USA Today entitled, “A doctor’s request: Please don’t ‘friend’ me,” which asks the question whether doctors and patients should interact in social networking sites such as Facebook.
Social networking has huge potential in health care regarding the sharing of information and ideas, and could possibly even enhance communication between doctors and patients. However, as Dr. Chretien points out, many …
Should you friend your doctor on Facebook?
It’s a question that’s gaining increasing relevance as Facebook increases its social networking dominance.
I’ve touched upon the issue in the past. So has the New England Journal of Medicine.
Washington, DC physician Katherine Chretian gives her take on the issue in a recent USA Today op-ed. She is an expert of the Facebook-medicine intersection, having authored a JAMA study on the …
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