Thanks to @MDStudent31 for archiving the Day One tweets from the AAFP Family Medicine Congressional Conference. It was amazing to see in real time as it unfolded. I tried to capture the thing in a previous post, but I ran into problems. Thanks to Kevin, he archived the tweets and I'm placing the graphic below for your review. For a full screen view, click on the link above the graphic. Don't forget that Day Two is tomorrow. See you on twitter!
Blog
2011 Family Medicine Congressional Conference
Shout out to everyone in DC today for the AAFP Family Medicine Congressional Conference. You'll see a description and update from the 2010 conference in the you tube video below. In addition, I'm going to try to generate a twitter stream for people who have never seen one before (especially if you're not signed up on twitter). I apologize for the pre-roll ad on this "CoverItLive" platform, but it's short and then you'll be able to follow what's going on during today's conference.
Why Family Medicine Needs Social Media
I wasn't able to attend the Annual Leadership Forum (ALF) and the National Conference of Special Constituencies (NCSC) meetings in person this year. This is an annual meeting in Kansas City put on by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP). I know that it can be hard to believe that someone actually likes going to a meeting. However, for me, these meetings always re-energize me and connect me with people with a passion for Family Medicine.
In 2010, there were only a few of us utilizing social media tools like twitter and facebook (including my blog posts from Thursday & Friday). However, just a year later, there seems to have been an explosion of people utilizing these platforms to a point yesterday when I saw a bunch of people signing up for the first time during the meeting. Even members of the AAFP Board of Directors were creating twitter accounts yesterday. Wow!
I really believe that this year, 2011, is when the Family Medicine community will more fully embrace social media, not only as a means of socialization, but also as a means of advocacy for our specialty. Here are some other reasons why I believe that Family Medicine needs social media:
- Maintaining The Meeting Momentum: How often does this happen to you? At the meeting/event, you're all psyched up and ready to conquer the world! Then in the car and/or on the plane ride home, you get overwhelmed with the reality of returning to work and all that energy from the meeting is gone - yielding to the status quo of home. Well, that doesn't need to happen with social media. You can remain connected with all those great people you met. In fact, what I have found is that those great people keep you motivated through all those day-to-day challenges. Why aren't you signed up for twitter or facebook yet?
- Join the #FMRevolution: Dr. Jay Lee, the 2012 Conference Chair/Convener for the NCSC meeting, wrote a compelling essay called "#FMRevolution - Family Medicine Revolution" back in March. In my opinion, this has picked up a lot of traction in the Family Medicine social media community. If you haven't read this blog post, you must. In fact, the California Academy is going to unveil an entire website on this topic coming up on Friday, May 13, 2011 and undoubtedly this premiere will be a social media event. Join the revolution!
- Letting The World Know About Family Medicine Events: Even though I was in my office seeing patients yesterday, I was able to track the activities a the ALF/NCSC meetings through twitter. The week prior, I was part of a group of people tweeting out at the Annual Spring Conference at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) meeting in New Orleans. On Monday & Tuesday, May 9-10 in Washington DC, the AAFP has an opportunity to broadcast to the world the Family Medicine Congressional Conference. (Just a suggestion, please don't use #fmcc as the hashtag, as people will not know what that is. Gotta use something like #FamMed or #FMRevolution. The EMS folks used #EMSOnTheHill recently and it worked out well for them)
- What Is A Family Physician?: Social media gives the opportunity to start an online dialogue. At the previously mentioned STFM meeting, we got into a great discussion about why Family Medicine really has not done a great job of defining who we are and what we do to our own patients, to the public at large, to payors, and to legislators? Mark Ryan, Family Physician from Virginia, carried this discussion onto social media with his post "How Do I Define Family Medicine?" (including a comment from a medical student) Can you imagine that? Crowdsourcing the definition of Family Medicine. What an incredible way to do it via social media. It is discussions like this that need to take place to help our specialty.
There are so many more reasons why Family Medicine needs social media. Feel free to jot your reasons below in the comment section. Are you new to social media? Did you just sign up for twitter at the ALF/NCSC meeting? Welcome! As you start using this stuff more, please feel free to let us know your questions. There are already a lot of knowledgeable people in the Family Medicine community using this stuff.
Once you start becoming more familiar with how things work, I challenge you to get your voice out there by writing a blog post (like my post entitled "What Is A Family Medicine Leader?"), by recording a youtube video, or by whatever means you feel comfortable with. Family Medicine needs us, and more importantly, our patients need us! Let your voice be heard!
This Week's #FamMedChat & Podcast
This week's #FamMedChat will take place tonight (Wednesday, May 4, 2011) at 9pm Eastern Time with Mark Ryan @RichmondDoc being the moderator. Who knows what the questions will be? You'll have to check out the chat tonight to see what happens. We've had great participation for the first couple of chats.
In addition, the Family Medicine Rocks Podcast Episode 8 will take place on Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 7pm Eastern Daylight Time on BlogTalkRadio. Don't worry if you cannot listen live, as you can listen to the show afterward on the archived podcast.
In addition to the Family Medicine news from the past week, I'll be talking about the American Academy of Family Physicians Annual Leadership Forum and National Conference of Special Constituencies. I'll also be wrapping up my time at the Annual Spring Conference at the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine meeting in New Orleans. Hope you can join us for the chat and for the show this week!
Shrink Rap On NPR
The authors of the Shrink Rap blog and of the book above called "Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work" were on National Public Radio yesterday on the show Talk Of The Nation. I was able to listen live and in real time and they did a great job.
I also invite you to check out Dinah's post on yesterday's activities as well. You can listen to their NPR interview below. The book also has a great Facebook page. Finally, check out their appearance on the Family Medicine Rocks Podcast Episode Five from April 14, 2011 where we talk about this "upcoming" NPR interview...
Family Medicine & Social Media
Above you will see a video that was recorded at the 2011 Annual Spring Conference of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine meeting in New Orleans. Presenting are myself and Deb Clements. The topic is, what else, Family Medicine and Social Media.
The video quality is not ideal. But, this was the first attempt to live stream a session from the STFM meeting. And, more importantly, we had no budget. I brought all of my own equipment. This video was taken from the video card in the camera and I tried to improve the video & audio quality a little bit. Not sure how successful I was.
I also encourage you to check out the other video recorded at this conference by Mark Ryan and Ben Miller on the same topic. Hopefully the social media work that was done at last week's conference will set the bar higher for Family Medicine meetings. Enjoy!
Always Remember
STFM NOLA Reflections
As I start writing this, I have an hour before boarding the plane for home. So, I apologize up front if this post is not as polished as I would like. I'm trying my best to block out all those thoughts of what is in store for me, from a work standpoint, when the wheels touchdown at home airport. These are the last few hours before reality hits me right in the face again. So, what follows below are just some random thoughts from the last few days:
- New Orleans: Definitely a different place then I was here the last time which was pre-Katrina. A different feel, a different energy, a different type of crowd walking around. Sorry if this sounds negative, but even though some of the buildings are rebuilt, the richness of the NOLA culture still seems to be a little off. I know I'll get hate mail on this, but I have never heard, "I can't help you, that's not my job" as much as I have this week.
- STFM Annual Spring Conference: This was my first time at this particular meeting. I tweeted about this, but it seems that there was a lot of career planning going on. I couldn't help but get caught up in the hype. Could I really give up full time clinical practice for a full time academic position at a residency program or at a medical school? Or, maybe even consider an career as an executive physician in like a management position? At this point, I get so much gratification in what I'm doing at home and I cannot forsee me giving that up right now.
- Family Medicine and Social Media: I'm very happy with what was accomplished this week in regards to that. I ran a live internet radio show from my New Orleans hotel, which had its technical glitches, but overall, I'm happy with t product that was produced. With the assistance and the blessing of STFM, we were able to broadcast two sessions (Social Media session One, Social Media session two) live on the internet through their ustream page. I wrote blog posts with my observations from Day One, Day Two, and, of course, this one. Finally, we were able to have a live twitter chat called #FamMedChat in which there were people chatting in person from the meeting and off site people as typical with twitter chats. Hopefully what we accomplished this week will set a new standard for Social Media at Family Medicine meetings.
- What Is A Family Physician? - At every meeting I go to, the question comes up: How can we better market ourselves to our patients, to payors, and to legislators? The follow-up questions are always this: Why can't we agree on how to describe ourselves? What is a Family Physician? How do we define the term? I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about this. It's not that I don't have a definition. It's just how to come up with that "soundbite" definition for that marketing campaign or marketing material. There is no easy answer, but the Family Medicine community needs to come up with one and agree on it. I praise Mark Ryan for taking a stab at this. I also invite you to check out the comment by a medical student following his post.
- Reconnecting: I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people I knew from my AAFP student/resident leadership days. Was a great time to catch up and reconnect. It's hard to believe it's been 10 years since I got involved with AAFP on a big basis. My how time flies and seeing were people are now.
- New Twitter Friends: When I go to meetings now, one of the things I really look forward to is meeting "in real life" the people whom I've only met on twitter. You kind of know their "twitter personna," but is that really them? And, what will they think of me? It was nice to connect the avatar to the real person. I know I have found some lifetime friends in this group - it's just which ones - HA!
- Lecture Circuit: I have to tell you that April was very busy for me doing a lot of traveling and speaking. Now that it's May and I'm looking back, the first part was really fun, but the latter part of the month was starting to wear on me. And I kept asking myself if I would consider doing a lot more traveling to do talks. Now, I'm not sure. Maybe I'm just a boring home body, I've missed being at home and I'm really ready to go home.
I hope you've enjoyed my coverage of the Annual Spring Conference of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine meeting from New Orleans. I apologize to all my twitter followers who weren't really interested in my #stfm tweets. Feel free to re-follow me now - Hehe. Back to work tomorrow for me. Hm. When am I on call this week?
STFM NOLA Day Two Wrap-up
I have to tell you that the weather here in New Orleans was just perfect. The temps here today were in the 70s - maybe even hit 80 here today. What a great day to have a meeting, huh? Actually, I think a lot of people were at the Jazz Fest - as the meeting traffic was not as busy as yesterday.
At the end of the day, there was an interesting presentation about New Orleans in a post Hurricane Katrina world. The speaker put up maps from the US Geological Service which tell the story of how much erosion has taken place in this part of the country from the environment. You can see an example of this map by clicking here (you may have to zoom out a bit). In addition, I didn't realize how much commerce takes place through this city and if the port of New Orleans would go away for any reason, just how much that would impact any state or community who has access to the Mississippi River.
I know I'm bias, but today's highlight for me was my social media presentation with my good friend Deb Clements. We talked about social media and Family Medicine. I've presented these slides on a few occasions in the past few weeks. So, I was really comfortable with the material. What I've been working on for these past few talks have been my flow of the presentation and the pacing of the presentation. At some point, I probably should write up a blog post about my evolution as a conference speaker - because it's been an interesting process - as process of self-discovery as well.
Anyway, feel free to check out the full presentation above. Thanks to STFM for making their ustream channel available and for the free wi-fi during the meeting for the participants. (Attention all conference organizers, if you want to make social media work at your meeting, please make free wi-fi available to the participants.) Thanks also to Mark Ryan for running the camera for me. I realize that the video production quality is not ideal, but this is just an example of what can be done with a budget of zero. I supplied all the video equipment after doing extensive research on this topic. If I get time (which has been difficult for me), I'll try to edit this vid into smaller chunks to make it easier for consumption.
I'm not heading home until Sunday, but this will probably be the last post from this meeting. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the social media projects that I was a part of this week. I was hoping to show the Family Medicine community some of the potential of using Social Media in the setting of a meeting. In addition to blog posts like this, there is the ability to use twitter during the meeting, live podcasting over the internet during the meeting, live video stream of meeting sessions, and even having a live twitter chat connecting the people on site with the people off site at home. If you felt connected to this meeting, even though you were not actually here, my goal has been achieved :)
STFM NOLA Day One Wrap-Up
This post is a summary, from my point of view, of events from day one the Annual Spring Conference of the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine (STFM) meeting in New Orleans. Yesterday, the meeting kicked off, with, what else, with a jazz band marching into the lecture hall to the thrilling applause of a semi-sleeping and semi-awake audience. Quite entertaining.
The plenary speaker was Paul Grundy who is president of the Patient Centered Primary Care Collaborative. He is one of may speakers who state that medicine needs to move beyond episodic care of illness to more of a management of health and wellness. "We now have the data," Dr. Grundy says, "And I don't want to buy this anymore."
He challenged the audience and he challenges medicine to transform the care that we give now. During the question and answer session, there were some good questions from Family Medicine educators on how to implement these steps, especially if there are outside forces fighting this. I'm curious to hear more stories about how to deal with detractors of the PCMH model.
In the afternoon, I don't believe that this has ever been attempted before, but we tried to video stream a session here at STFM. I know that other organizations and meetings have done this, but this was the first time here. I'd really like to thank the STFM and its staff for allowing us to try this out.
You'll see an archive of the live video stream above. It is Mark Ryan and Ben Miller presenting on applications of social media to medicine. (Their powerpoint slide deck will be made available in the future. When it is, I will place the link here). In a total social media moment, Ben was watching the talk live on his phone, in the cab, since his flight was running late. So, he knew exactly what slide Mark was on when Ben walked in the door. It's a very cool moment of the video above.
Last night, in the hotel lobby (actually the hotel bar), the 2nd ever #FamMedChat took place on twitter. We had a great small group of people in person here at the meeting also taking part in the chat. You can see some of them in this picture. I admit that I wasn't typing that much during the chat - since I was chatting with the people in person. Great fun was had by all. (Ben even quipped that enjoyed the car that I drive - Hehe) Did you miss the chat? You can always click here to read through the archived chat.
As far as today, continue to keep track of the meeting in real time on twitter by using the hashtag #stfm. This afternoon, if you're not already at the New Orleans Jazz Fest, or watching the final launch of shuttle Endeavour, or gossiping about today's Royal Wedding, I invite you to check out my presentation about Family Medicine and Social Media which will be taking place live on ustream at 4:30pm Eastern Daylight Time. If you're on site, it'll be in room Napoleon D3. Don't worry if you miss it live, the archived talk (hopefully) will be posted here. Have a great day everybody!