In Decemeber 2013 - Professor Matt de Camp and I were asked to debate whether social media was a waste of time for doctors in the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. You can read the full paper
here and see some discussion on PubMed commons about it
here. This is my part of the paper with hyperlinks. I should mention that JRCPE is an open access journal who allowed me to retain my copyright. This is therefore published here, along with the infographic and my slides, under a creative commons license so feel free to reuse and remix as you wish.
Should you have a strong social media presence? I am
going to give you ten reasons why I think you need one.
Social media provides an opportunity to publish your
thoughts and ideas and to share your experiences
without having to go through a middleman. And many
people are taking advantage of this.
Globally half a billion tweets are posted every day. (1) Surely it must be possible
to find something of value that could make it worthwhile
for a doctor to start exploring these spaces? It is not
nearly as difficult as you might think, because these
pieces of information are not just floating unconnected
to each other; they are disseminated and linked to
through networks of your peers.
Developing networks, and figuring out who and what to pay attention to, are some of the key learning skills we need in the twenty-first century. (2) I will convince you that it is worth
developing these skills.
10 Reasons to have a social media presence
To connect
The landmark report on ‘
Health professionals for a new century’ suggested that we need ‘locally responsive but
globally connected teams’
3
but lamented that ‘most
institutions are not sufficiently outward looking to
exploit the power of networking and connectivity for
mutual strengthening’.(3) But this is changing. It is now rare
to attend a forward-thinking event without being
encouraged to tweet with the conference hashtag. We
are our institutions, and we are leading the way; we are
making the connections.
To engage
Social media is not just about getting your message out. It
is also about listening. We can learn with
patient leaders.( 4 )As Gilbert and Doughty, co-directors of the Centre for
Patient Leadership, describe ‘[w]hen patients can both
manage their own health and go on to develop the
confidence and skills to lead and influence others,
something special happens: new collaborative systems of
healthcare take shape and positive solutions emerge to
healthcare problems, locally and nationally.’ (4) Through their
blogs and tweets you can engage with them.
To inform
If you are trying to do things differently, changing the
way you and your team work, where can you tell
people about this? Consultant endocrinologist Partha
Kar uses his blog,
NHS Sugar Doc, to communicate
how an award-winning team is involving patients in
redesigning their service, meeting the challenges of
modern healthcare.(5)
To reflect
Elin Roddy is a respiratory consultant. She also tweets
(
@elinlowri). During
‘dying matters’ awareness week,
and prompted by discussions of end-of-life care on
Twitter, she decided to write
her first blog post: a
reflection on how, during her working life, she has ‘been
involved with death in many different guises and in many
different ways.’ (6) Thirty eight people – health professionals
and patients – left comments to say how they had been
moved by her eloquent writing. She is now lead for end-of-life care in her trust and says this would not have
happened without her learning through social media.
To share
In a hospital in London a patient has
the wrong foot
operated on because they put a compression stocking
on the wrong side. The checks and balances which the
nominally implemented surgical checklist should have
provided did not happen. (7) Fortunately the other foot
needed operating on too. After investigations were
completed the medical director of the trust gave
permission for an account to be shared through social
media. The story
‘Wrongfooted’ by anaesthetist
Helgi Johnannson has been viewed more than 17,000 times. (7) When surgeon and medical director,
Dermot Riordan,
read the story
he wrote on his blog that he felt ‘déjà vu,
sadness and even anger’. (8)
A year ago nearly exactly the
same mistake had occurred where he works. He
describes the transparent and open approach that his
team took to learning about this incident but he
personally regrets that he did not share this learning
with others in the way that ‘Wrongfooted’ showed it
could be done. Social media is changing how we conceive
of dissemination.
To be challenged
Often the best way to learn is to be challenged. Earlier
this year people who had experienced mental health
care started tweeting their experiences using the tag
#DearMentalHealthProfessionals. (9) Along with appreciation
and thanks there were also tweets which expressed
how it felt to be let down by a system that is supposed
to help. To be able to change systems for the better we
need to work towards understanding, and that starts
with shifting our perspectives. Social media can help us
to do this.
To be supported
Sometimes we just need to know that we are not alone.
#TipsForNewDocs are short messages of advice for
newly graduated medics from doctors, other health
professionals and patients. Like many social media
activities it is hard to say who started this trend but
Guardian healthcare(10)and
the GMC(11) have both used the
tag to support this important transition.
To lead
How much impact can you achieve through social
media?
NHS Change Day has been lauded as the
‘
biggest ever day of collective action to improve healthcare that started with a tweet’. (12) A conversation
between some junior doctors on Twitter was the
catalyst for a project which saw 189,000 people take
action on 13 March 2013 to improve the care of the
patients they served. (12)
To learn
Free open access medical education – otherwise known
as
FOAMed (13) is on the rise. In the past we used
databases to store and find these resources, but now we
are increasingly depending on the power of distributed
networks to help filter the best content for our needs.
New educational initiatives are starting every week in
social media. The case-based discussions of
ECGclass (14) and
Gasclass for anaesthesia (15) can give you a flavour of
what is achievable.
To inspire
Kate Granger is a doctor training in elderly medicine;
she is also terminally ill with a rare aggressive abdominal
sarcoma.
During a recent hospital admission (16) she
noticed that too many of the staff she met did not
introduce themselves. She decided that something
needed to be done, so she wrote a blog post with a
simple idea – when health professionals meet patients
they should say ‘
hello, my name is’. (17) People started
talking about her idea and doing what she asked. The
campaign has reached so many people that it is
mentioned in the
Government’s response to the Francis Inquiry. (18)
Conclusion
Is social media a professionalism quagmire? Could your
professional reputation hang on as few as 140 characters?
Yes, norms are still being established but that means you
can shape them. The truth is that if you respect your
patients and your colleagues, like these pioneering
physicians, you have little to fear. Instead, you should be
feeling optimistic and excited that you can now easily tap
into a global community who can help you to be a better
doctor in a better system with your patients.
References
1 Naughton J. What’s Twitter’s real value? Don’t ask an economist.
The Observer.2013 Nov 24.
2 Rheingold H. Net smart: how to thrive online. Cambridge: MIT Press;
2012.
3 Frenk J, Chen L, Bhutta ZA et al. Health professionals for a new
century: transforming education to strengthen health systems in
an interdependent world. Lancet2010; 376:1923–58. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1016/S0140-6736(10)61854-5
4 Gilbert D, Doughty M. Quality: why patient leaders are the new
kids on the block. Health Serv J2012; 122:26–7.
5 Kar P. Game-changer III: ward priority and transparency[Internet}.
Partha Kar 2013 Nov 16 [cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://
nhssugardoc.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/game-changer-iii-ward-priority-and.html
6 Lowri E. Dying matters[Internet]. Elin Lowri 2013 May 13 [cited 2013
Nov 27]. Available from: http://elinlowri.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/
dying-matters/
7 Wrongfooted[Internet]. 2013 Oct 13 [cited 2013 Nov 27].
Available from: http://storify.com/traumagasdoc/wrongfooted
8 O’Riordan D. Failure to learn[Internet]. Dermot O’Leary 2013 Oct
20 [cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://oriordan.co.uk/blog/
files/Failing%20to%20learn.html
9 Betton V. #DearMentalHealthProfessionals[Internet]. Victoria
Betton 2013 Aug [cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://
storify.com/VictoriaBetton/dearmentalhealthprofessionals
10 Guardian Healthcare. #TipsForNewDocs[Internet]. 2012 [cited
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tipsfornewdocs
11 General Medical Council. #tipsfornewdocs[Internet]. 2013 [cited
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12 Bevan H, Roland D, Lynton J et al. Biggest ever day of collective
action to improve healthcare that started with a tweet [Internet].
2013 June 14 [cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://www.
mixprize.org/story/biggest-ever-day-collective-action-improve-healthcare-started-tweet-0
13 Life in the fastlane. FOAM – Free Open Access Medical Education
[Internet]. 2013 [cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://
lifeinthefastlane.com/foam/
14 Wetherell H. Keeping ECGs simple[Internet]. 2013 [cited 2013 Nov
27]. Available from: http://hcwetherell.blogspot.co.uk/
15 Gasclass. Gasclass: the web school of anaesthesia[Internet]. 2013
[cited 2013 Nov 25]. Available from: http://gasclass.wordpress.com/
16 Granger K. The other side live![Internet]. Kate Granger 2013 Aug
[cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://storify.com/katemgranger/
the-other-side-live
17 Granger K. #hellomynameis[Internet]. Kate Granger 2013 Sept 4
[cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: http://drkategranger.
wordpress.com/2013/09/04/hellomynameis/
18 Department of Health. Hard truths: the journey to putting patients
first. Volume one of the Government response to the Mid Staffordshire
NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry[Internet]. London: Department
of Health; 2013 [cited 2013 Nov 27]. Available from: https://www.
gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/
file/259648/34658_Cm_8754_Vol_1_accessible.pdf