The above video commentary are some thoughts about the past week (actually the past couple of weeks since this month started) when it comes to the intersection of Family Medicine and Social Media. I cannot believe that only a couple of weeks ago, we were in New Orleans doing a bunch of social media projects at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine meeting.
Then, only week ago was the Kansas City meetings of the AAFP Annual Leadership Forum and National Conference of Special Constituencies. Just a few days ago in DC was the AAFP Family Medicine Congressional Conference. And this upcoming weekend are the state academy meetings of California & Washington.
What all these meetings have in common are their use of social media - not only that - but also the rising popularity of the use of twitter and other platforms at these Family Medicine meetings. I'm very happy with that and I hope that this trend continues. Are you in Family Medicine and utilize social media in some way, leave me a comment below. I'd like to know about it.
As a closing point, I received the following comment from Rolf Olsen on a previous post called "Why Family Medicine Needs Social Media." I think it is the next step in the use of social media in our specialty:
On reading the brief blurb that brought me to this blog post, I actually thought it would be about communicating about Family Medicine with patients and the general public. That's my particular prejudice and perspective. I'm not a physician, I work in health care communicaton, but I would very much like to see more consumer/patient-oriented information about all of primary care. Is there a diffence in care for children from a pediatrician vs. a family medicine doc? What the heck does 'Internal Medicine' mean, and does care from an internist differ from care for an adult from a family medicine doc? And while we're on the topic, what's the difference between an intern and an internist? Maybe you get my point. It's great if you family medicine practitioners use social media to communicate amongst yourselves, to keep current and stay in touch. But in the evolving realm of primary care, more needs to be done to help consumers understand and make informed choices in a critical realm of life.
Check out my response and I encourage you to respond to this comment as well on this previous post. Our patients and the public want us to communicate with the using social media. There is no way we can communicate in this manner - until we learn the social media tools to communicate amongst ourselves. So, I challenge the Family Medicine community to continue to learn and to become familiar with these tools. When we do that, we can take the next step in reaching out to communicate with our patients and with the public about what we do and how to differentiate ourselves from others.