That’s when health professionals blog and tweet and text, not only to each other — but to their patients. Some even go as far as making friends on Facebook, though there’s much debate among health pros about where professional should stop at personal when it comes to social networking with patients.
The conversation opens with Dr. Jennifer Dyer discussing some of the opportunities, and results, she’s seen in embracing social media and other communication technologies in working with her patients. As a pediatric endocrinologist, her patients are no doubt ripe for new doctor-patient relationship models. In this 2-minute YouTube video, she talks about using texting to help her diabetic patients remember to take their boluses of insulin with some pretty sound success.
While I love the results Dr. Dyer is seeing, I’m fascinated by Dr. Friedman who was definitely less enthusiastic about social media tools being used in medicine. Concerns about privacy were no doubt his biggest issue and there were thoughts on the appropriateness of relationships between patients and physicians in a well-connected social Internet as well.
With our professional clients at AvidTetra, we preach about using social media on one’s own terms. When a client want to embrace a tool, we challenge and ask about what gains are expected to be made from using that tool. When a tool is shunned, we ask about whether they know about what they’re missing.
Using social media on one’s own terms isn’t something that Dr. Friedman got to in the White Coat, Black Art program – he talked about being “on Facebook” as though that actually means something, but I don’t think it means anything at all. You can be on Facebook and do nothing. Ever. You can be on Facebook and connect with your family to see what they’re up to without contributing any content. You can also post your entire life in pictures, status updates and Farmville plantations, but Dr. Friedman was representing physicians who put down the idea of social medicine without considering its various implementations. Social Media is what you make of it – there’s no hard and fast rule for how people should use it.
Despite the unequivocal put-down of social media’s role in patient care, in fairness it’s important to note that Dr. Friedman was very clear that his colleagues are excited to embrace the secure, non-social Internet as a game-changer in how they interact with patients. To me, I’m not sure that’ll be enough.
The last guest on the program was a fellow by the name of Lee Aase. I first connected with Lee on Twitter a few weeks before this program while attending a conference at the Mayo Clinic where Lee works at the Center for Social Media. I love this center – it’s about engaging healthcare professionals in social media to improve the lives and wellbeing of people everywhere and that’s exactly what Lee talked about on the program.
Privacy is a major concern with healthcare, but privacy is not what it used to be. Take, for example, PatientsLikeMe. I saw its founder, Jamie Heywood, present at the Mayo Clinic in September and what’d he say about privacy on his site? ”Here’s the contract: You join our website and you share everything. Everything. You get no privacy on our website. We’re not even going to pretend that you can be anonymous…”. And people do join. And they learn. And medicine improves.
Doctors don’t have the luxury to behave like teenagers in social media. I don’t think accountants, lawyers, politicians or anyone else who is held to a standard of professionalism, ethics and responsibility can afford to embrace all that is social in social media. People trust us too much for us to be totally naked and human - fallible - at our own hand. With that in mind, patient care is not good enough anywhere in the world and the opportunities that we have to connect people with authentic improvements in wellbeing far outweigh the easily-managed perceived risks.
{ 0 comments }
