As recently graduated medical students are on the verge of beginning their residency programs, the Social Media Health Network is pleased to offer a resource to encourage awareness of and discussions relating to use of social media.
In “The Doctor is Online: Physician Use, Responsibility, and Opportunity in the Time of Social Media” — a project conceived by Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, a pediatric gastroenterologist at Texas Children’s Hospital who blogs at 33Charts — several experienced physicians who are also active in social media provide advice and insights to young doctors just beginning their residency training.
Dr. Vartabedian approached us at the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media in April to ask whether this might be an appropriate project for the Social Media Health Network. Together we invited Dr. Wendy Sue Swanson — a pediatrician blogger from Seattle who is a member of our Center for Social Media Advisory Board — and Dr. Katherine Chretien of George Washington University to join Dr. Victor Montori of Mayo Clinic — our medical director for the Center for Social Media — to share their insights. Here is the video we produced with them:
I’m certain our physician participants will be sharing further thoughts in the discussion here, as well as on their own blogs. In the coming days we will also update this post with additional resources and links.
Meanwhile, we would appreciate your thoughts:
- What issues do you think are most important for physicians being involved in social media?
- What advice would you offer to young physicians on their use of social media? What are your top tips?
We look forward to starting a productive discussion on physician involvement in social media, and to your contributions to raising awareness of the issues and opportunities.
Additional Resources
Policies, Guidelines
- AMA Policy: Professionalism in the Use of Social Media
- Guseh JS 2nd, Brendel RW, Brendel DH. Medical professionalism in the age of online social networking. J Med Ethics. 2009;35(9):584-6.
- Social Media and the Medical Profession: A guide to online professionalism for medical practitioners and medical students. A joint initiative of the Australian Medical Association Council of Doctors-in-Training, the New Zealand Medical Association Doctors-in-Training Council, the New Zealand Medical Students’ Association and the Australian Medical Students’ Association.
- Gabbard GO, Kassaw KA, Perez-Garcia G, Professional boundaries in the era of the internet. Acad Psych. 2011;35:168-74.
- Brave New World of Social Media: Social networking is transforming the way medical students communicate with one another, but is online content meeting professional standards? The New Physician January-February 2010
Commentaries
- Farnan JM, Paro JA, Higa JT, et al. Commentary: The relationship status of digital media and professionalism: it’s complicated. Acad Med. 2009;84(11):1479-81.
- Greysen SR, Kind T, Chretien KC. Online Professionalism and the Mirror of Social Media. J Gen Intern Med. 2010 Nov;25(11):1227-9.
- Chretien KC. A doctor’s request: please don’t friend me. (Opinion-Editorial). USA Today. June 10, 2010.
Mostaghimi A, Crotty BH. Professionalism in the digital age. Ann Intern Med. 2011;154(8):560-2.
Papers
- Chretien KC, Greysen SR, Chretien JP, Kind T. Online posting of unprofessional content by medical students. JAMA. 2009 Sep 23;302(12):1309-15.
- Thompson LA, Dawson K, Ferdig R, Black EW, Boyer J, Coutts J, et al. The intersection of online social networking with medical professionalism. J Gen Intern Med. 2008 Jul;23(7):954-7.
- Lagu T, Kaufman EJ, Asch DA, Armstrong K. Content of weblogs written by health professionals. J Gen Intern Med. 2008 Oct;23(10):1642-6.
- Garner J, O’Sullivan H. Facebook and the professional behaviours of undergraduate medical students. Clin Teach. 2010;7(2):112-5.
- Kind T, Genrich G, Sodhi A, Chretien KC. Social Media Policies at US Medical Schools. Med Educ Online. 2010 Sep 15;15. doi: 10.3402/meo.v15i0.5324.
- Chretien KC, Goldman EF, Beckman L, Kind T. It’s your own risk: students’ perspectives on online professionalism. Acad Med. 2010;85(10)S1-S4.
- Farnan JM, Paro JA, Higa J, Edelson J, Arora VM. The YouTube generation: Implications for medical professionalism. Perspectives in Biology & Medicine. 2008;51(4):517-24.
- Chretien KC, Azar J, Kind T. Physicians on Twitter. JAMA. 2011: 305(6):566-8.
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Lee Aase
Shawn Bishop
Randy Schwarz
Makala Johnson
Joyce Groenke
Joel Streed
Dana Sparks
Polly Gilgenbach
Ronald Petrovich
Stacy Theobald
Susana Shephard
Alyson Fleming
Jason Pratt
paulspeyser
mayoclinic
Farris Timimi
Nicely done! A great group and a great resource.
Lee,
Great video! I will tweet it as soon as I finish typing this comment.
I have a medical student (@astupple) who wants to be a member of this network; I’m sure he is not alone among medical students in wanting to be part of this enterprise. What are the rules for student membership? Is their a student membership rate? In my opinion, the best way to get the engagement you’re looking for is by tapping into the pool of budding docs who are at the stage of their career where this information is most relevant. All progress made here at SUNY Upstate on novel concepts such as social media in medicine is from a grass roots level. I think that principle applies generally to everything.
The docs in this video are serving as great role models!
Bob
Thanks, Bob…we’re looking at creating student and other individual membership options.
Video applies to e-pataients also, great points. Thank you for putting this together. Appreciate the advice Dr. Swanson spoke about- thinking through your posts- sleep on it is always a wise decision when you are uncertain about content.
Bravo!
Appreciate how these important and valuable messages about using social media wisely and well are delivered in this video by smart, articulate doctors. I hope this reaches beyond medical students and new docs and will pitch it that way in my tweet.
It’s work like this that makes me very proud to be a part of the #HCSM community on Twitter and involved with #MCCSM.
This is absolutely brilliant. If you folks left out something big, I can’t think what it would be! I blogged this at: http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/must-watch-for-healthcare-professionals-new-to-social-media/ I absolutely expect to depend on this for a long time to come.
Lee,
Great work on the video and just the right depth of comments by the physicians to help stimulate a conversation. I’ll be presenting on this very topic at Grand Rounds at Mount Sinai Miami soon and will absolutely be directing them to this video and site!
Kevin
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Excellent job. I think you covered the two most critical areas for physicians acting as individuals: professionalism and privacy/security matters. There are two other issues: licensure issues with the perceptual creation of a physician-patient relationship (professional advice, etc.), and issues of endorsements/disclosures (FTC regs and social media). The former probably is very critical for new physicians, the latter more so for physicians as they aggregate their interests and social media activities (esp., group practices: branding, marketing, etc.).
Great project and post. In your resources, you might include the CDC’s Social Media Toolkit:
http://www.cdc.gov/healthcommunication/…/SocialMediaToolkit_BM.pdf
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Looking forward to further videos and exchanges
Social media gives us as physicians a great oppurtunity to do prevention and education in a responsable way
Merci!
I could not wish a better, more to the point highlight for the blog post I am writing!
Congratulations to Dr. Bryan Vartabedian for his idea, to all the doctors who share their experience in social media and of course to Lee Aase for putting together this great post rich in resources! The video and the post should be mandatory reading material for the patient – doctor communication course at medical schools!
I am writing a post on the panel discussion about the new doctor-patient relation that we had in a workshop at the “Doctors 20 and You” (http://www.doctors20.com/video/physician-patient-relationship/) international conference in Paris on June 22-23. The panel was enriched by the presence of Dr. Bryan Vartabedian, Angel Gonzalez, and Franz Wiesbauer in addition to the scheduled Gilles Frydman, Peter Becznik and me.
I arrived to this post, after glimpsing on my twitter timeline a post with the title of the video “The Doctor is Online: Physician Use, Responsibility & Opportunity in the Time of Social Media” and I thought that the attitude of doctors towards social media and how they use them greatly affect the relation with patients. In reality how doctors use social media directly influences the relation with the “new” informed patient.
Thank you again for sharing this great video and content!
As the Author of the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Social Media Marketing..I applaud you for taking a stand and saying “yes” to powerful social media marketing for the medical industry. For years I’ve been telling folks in the medical field they need to embrace this communication revolution. I raise my glass to you and your team for staking claim and saying “yes..there is a way!” (If I can serve as a resource for you, I’d be glad to do so!)
Jennifer Abernethy
The Sales Lounge.com
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Excellent starting point for encouraging medical students to take professionalism seriously. This message is helpful and broadly applicable to all healthcare professionals.
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What an excellent, proactive service announcement for the medical profession itself. This needs to be required viewing for all physicians wondering what all the fuss is (good and bad) about “healthcare social media”. And certainly something that current med-students need to grasp early on. I’m a fan of engagement by health professionals of all sorts, but it’s important to remember that responsibility to the patient and the profession comes first. Doing so will right away set the tone for a digital footprint that will represent you well.
This is wonderful! I am impressed with the clear, cogent arguments you put out there. These arguments are powerful both in their ability to promote the acceptance of the use of SM within medicine and in their ability to help us keep this use responsible. I am proud to be a part of this group of tweeting/blogging and above all, communicating doctors!
Kudos to Lee and all involved in this wonderful project. I would like to suggest that a similar video be made for nurses and nursing students. Nurses, as well as physicians, need to at the table of social media in healthcare. I would be happy to help with a project for nurses. (I administer the social media sites for both the UMass College of Nursing and Health Sciences and the Tufts University School of Medicine’s Pain Research, Education and Policy Program). Anyone else interested?
Pam Ressler
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Thanks for putting together this great video! I retweeted it to PAs and PA students because I believe it applies to any provider using social media. Think before you hit the enter key is right.
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