2010 HealthCamp SFBay

Now, I wasn't at the 2010 HealthCamp SFBay in person yesterday. But, I definitely felt like I was there. The social media coverage on this event was impressive. I was following the twitter stream all day. According to Gregg Masters, the twitter reach of the event reached 2,132,033 impressions (really?). In the video above, Todd Park gives what sounds like a keynote talk. What you'll hear is the energy in his voice as he presents his topic on next steps for the community health data initiative. I'm energized just watching this vid. Great job!

Dr. A Show 187 Tonight!

Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 9pmET/6pmPT (0100 UTC)

I hope you can join me tonight for Doctor Anonymous Show 187 when our guest will be Dana M Lewis who is the Interactive Marketing Specialist for Swedish Medical Center in Seattle, Washington. As I discussed in yesterday's post, Dana is also the founder and moderator of the #HCSM twitter chat that takes place Sunday evenings.

Swedish Medical Center has been celebrating its 100 year anniversary. And, next week will be their Health Care Symposium. If you haven't already, check out their speaker's list who include the US Surgeon General (who is a Family Doc) and the CEO of General Electric. I was lucky enough to be asked to be on a panel for the Pre-Conference session. Check out the pre-con agenda here. Dana and I will be talking about these topics, and a lot more...

If you are new to the show, I encourage you to catch us live. There is a great chat room that also goes on. You can even see my shining face on the webcam. Can't catch us live? That's ok. You can listen anytime after the show as it is saved as a podcast so you can listen anytime!

For first time Blog Talk Radio listeners:
*Although it is not required to listen to the show, I encourage you to register on the BlogTalkRadio site prior to the show. I think it will make the process easier.

*To get to my show site, click here. As show time gets closer, keep hitting "refresh" on your browser until you see the "Play/Chat" button. Then, of course, press the "Play/Chat" button.

Dr. A Show 187 Preview: Dana M Lewis

I invite you to join me for Doctor Anonymous Show 187 when our guest will be Dana M Lewis who is currently the Interactive Marketing Specialist for Swedish Health System in Seattle, Washington. Dana is probably known more for being the founder and moderator of the #HCSM twitter chat that takes place Sunday nights. HCSM stands for "Healthcare Communications and Social Media."

There's a great article about Dana over at Xconomy.com as well as at the Swedish MC site. In the article, it states that she was a freshman in high school when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Beginning at that point, Dana found a passion for communication which led her to achieving a Bachelors Degree in Communications with majors in public relations and political science. She has also won a number of awards including Best Non-profit Microblogging Award from the Society for New Communications.

So, join us on Thursday, October 7th, 2010 at 9pm Eastern Time/6pm Pacific Time for Doctor Anonymous Show 187. In addition, we'll be talking about the upcoming 2010 Swedish Health Care Symposium, of which, I'll be going to and being a part of the Pre-Conference. Hope to see you for the show!

Dr. A Goes To Washington

The next few days are going to be very busy for me, the blog, and for the Dr. A Show. To try to summarize things, I recorded the video above to let you know what is coming up. In addition, I'm going to be writing separate blog posts for most of the events above. I'll keep this video at the top of the blog in case you (meaning in case I) get confused on what is happening over the next few days. Enjoy!

AAFP President: Roland Goertz, MD

The above video was shown at the 2010 American Academy of Family Physicians annual meeting last week in Denver. Dr. Roland Goertz was installed as the AAFP President. It's always interesting seeing the background of some of the Family Medicine leadership. Like Dr. Goertz, I also started getting to know the Academy as a 2nd year medical student. Does that mean I'll be AAFP President someday? Probably not. But, it's always nice to see the person behind the title...

First #MDChat: My Reaction

MDchat: The World's First Twitter Chat for Physicans

View more presentations from MD Chat.

Branded as the "first twiter chat for physicians," MDChat took place just a few hours ago on twitter. If you would like to check out the transcript of what happened earlier, then click here. Unfortunately, I was not able to be an active participant because I was still in clinic, but I was able to see the stream of comments during that time. Here are a few of my initial reactions to what happened at MDChat.

Not A Lot Of Docs on MDChat: Maybe I was just peaking in at the wrong times, but it looked to me that there were not a lot of docs on "MDChat." And, I realize that one way to encourage docs to participate in twitter chats is to have twitter chats. But, it seemed to me that there were a lot more non-docs than docs

Lots Of Talking AT Docs And Not Talking WITH Docs: There was a lot of preaching going on directed toward the few physician participants. It's like some of those non-physicians who showed up really had an agenda and wanted to give a doc a piece of their mind. Lots of one sided conversation from my point of view.

Art Imitates Life: I really don't see (at this point) physician social media neophytes wanting to step into an arena like this. Every day in the office and hospital, docs every move is watched and examined; waiting for people to pounce on a slight misstep. In my opinion, today's MDChat was a digital microcosm of what happens in analog life. Physicians unfamiliar with social media are going to make mistakes. I finally understand why some docs would feel the need for closed systems like iMedExchange or sermo where docs can talk to peers, ask stupid social media questions, and not worry about others trying to take advantage of "a doctor's mistakes."

I apologize if this sounds harsh, but, at this point, this is my first impressions of what was branded as "MDChat." Do I have solutions on how to make it better? I have to think about this a little more before presenting some ideas, because if my idea is not well thought out, I know that I'll hear about it...

Breast Cancer Awareness

The above video clip is from an interview I did yesterday on local TV news talking about October being National Breast Cancer Awareness month. (If you found the video above informative, I encourage you to check out more health related videos on my you tube page)

This can be a complicated subject when it comes to when to screen for breast cancer, what factors are or are not associated with breast cancer, and what the potential treatments are for breast cancer. I definitely get a lot more questions from patients during this month. However, I encourage anyone who sees the video above, or who reads this blog - If there are questions, please make an appointment with your doctor to further discuss. Who knows, you may save your live, or the life of someone you love...

AAFP 2011 Family Physician Of The Year

The above video was recorded at the American Academy of Family Physicians meeting last week in Denver. S Hughes Melton, MD was awarded the 2011 Family Physician of the Year award. The video above shares his story. I also encourage you to read more of his story from this news article from the AAFP website. I have always been inspired by hearing the stories of the Family Physician of the Year. One of my wild and crazy dreams is to achieve this award someday. But, I know that I definitely have a long way to go. Congratulations Dr. Melton!

Video: We Are Family Physicians

The video above was shown at the 2010 American Academy of Family Physicians annual meeting in Denver last week. The theme is simple: "We are here. We are listening. We are healing. We are Family Physicians."

People ask me all the time "what do you do?" There is no easy way to explain all the things that I do as a family physician. In addition, each family doc in each community is unique. That's kind of part of the difficulty of answering the question. But, I believe, that the video above does a good job of trying to encapsulate who we are as family physicians....

Dr. A Show 186 Wrap-up: EMS Newbie

Thanks again to Ron Davis and to Kelly Grayson for being on Doctor Anonymous Show 186. They talked about their podcast called Confessions of an EMS Newbie, and they went out of their way to do it. Ron switched his class schedule to be on the show. And, Kelly called in from the EMS Expo conference in Dallas - after being on another bunch of podcasts earlier in the day.

In the video segment above, Ron talks about the origins of the podcast, Kelly talks about what drew him toward the medical field in the first place, and both talk about the experience & future experience of taking electronic tests. You can listen to the entire audio podcast on the player in the sidebar.

You can also download Doctor Anonymous Show 186 from the show's iTunes site and listen anytime. I also encourage you to check out the Facebook page for the show and hit the big "Like" button at the top. And, you can check out other videos on my you tube page. Thanks for your continued support of the show!