I have been drawn to social media (SM) both personally and professionally for many years now, but I still feel like an outlier in using it professionally. There have been ASCO education sessions on this topic, educational book articles, publications, and the like, but many of these take the approach that people don’t really understand SM and what it offers.
I fear that there is a different issue, that perhaps many health care professionals do think that they understand SM and that they have consciously decided not to use it professionally. Maybe they signed up for Twitter with their children’s help and found their feeds rapidly filled with tweets about Kim Kardashian, or they got Facebook friend requests from patients and quailed at the potential conflict of interest. Perhaps they mentioned it to colleagues or their chairperson and discovered that SM was dismissed or perhaps actively discouraged as something that had little benefit to a professional career. Instead of another lecture on how to sign up for SM, I thought I would share my experience, along with specific examples of how SM has directly led to professional benefits.
There is nothing inherently good or bad about SM. To put it simply, social media is media that is social; e.g., you can use it to interact with other people. Normal media is one direction only, to be received by you. You can yell at your television during the presidential debates, but Hillary, Bernie, Ted, and Donald can’t hear you. Social media allows you to interact with whoever is providing the information. If you disagree, please let me know in the comments below.
Your patients are rating you online: How to respond. Manage your online reputation: A social media guide. Find out how.
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