How should physicians utilize social media in their professional lives? In the video above, I was interviewed by Family Practice News at the 2011 American Academy of Family Physicians Annual Scientific Assembly meeting in Orlando. Check out this blog post where there are slides of my presentation at that meeting about social media. (Also FYI, as of this posting, the video above has the most hits of any on the Global Medical News Network channel - Yay!)
Especially for Family Medicine, using social media is very important, in my opinion, to help tell our story. For too long, I believe that we, as a specialty, have let others define who we are. Social media has a chance to change that.
As far as initial use of social media, I advise physicians that they are probably already using facebook for friends and family purposes. So, they should try experimenting with things like posting updates and pictures. When they are comfortable, then I advise physicians, for professional purposes, that they should create a facebook page for their clinic or office and post things like "We got our flu shots today," or, "Were you aware of the meningitis case at the local high school. Here are some things to keep in mind."
As I discuss in my social media talks, I do NOT recommend physicians talk about patients at all on social media, except if you have their explicit permission to do so. There have been a lot of cases of physicians getting in trouble for sharing confidential patient information on the internet.
Above all, I let physicians know that the people that will drive physicians to social media will be our patients - and this is why physicians should be aware of social media. Definitely physicians do not need to be as involved as I am with different social media platforms with blogging, twitter, facebook, youtube, etc. Having an awareness of how some of these things work will be key moving forward in the future.
You can download the entire audio podcast here. In the video below, you'll see my thoughts remembering Steve Jobs. I also invite you to check out other episodes of the audio podcast here. In addition, I invite you to "Like" the facebook page for the show, follow me on twitter, and check out my youtube videos. Enjoy!
In the video above, you'll see a vid that I pieced together to give you my impressions of last weekend's Kansas Patient Centered Medical Home Summit (Thanks to Tony Wood for the additional video). I know that I'm making it too simplistic a description, but PCMH is team based care with many medical professionals with the physician the leader of the team and the patient at the center of the care. Check out a good description of PCMH from the TransforMED site.
Perhaps the best sessions of the Kansas PCMH summit were the ones with patients presenting. In the video above, you'll hear segments of two patient stories. And you'll hear the frustrations that they have/are going through in dealing with this broken health care system.
Additionally in the video above, there is a segment where April Foreman utilized twitter following the Joplin tornado to get the word out before the first responders could get on the ground there. In the closing session of the conference, Dr. Kellerman stated that this meeting was "historic" and he expresses them at the end of the video above.
Finally, I will be sharing more thoughts from last weekend's Kansas PCMH meeting on my Family Medicine Rocks podcast episode 20 which will be on Thursday, October 6, 2011 - Live - at 2pm Eastern Time. Even if you cannot join me live, you'll have the opportunity to download the episode later and listen anytime.
Thanks to Lisa Roberts and the folks at the Kansas PCMH Initiative. It was also really cool to meet people like @DocForeman, @adwww, @sharlac78, and @KansasPCMH. I hope to write more about this meeting in the future as well...
I was at a soccer game tonight - using my iPhone 4 - when I heard of the news. I just could not pay much attention to the game. I kept checking my twitter and my facebook pages to see the tributes and the "#RIPSteveJobs" go across my iPhone.
My first computer at school was the Apple IIc in 1985. I was completely amazed about what I was seeing on that screen and this thing that they called a "mouse." Our first Mac at home was from the PowerPC series. And, I remember trying to fix some problems, and how happy I was trying to work through that stuff - I was in Junior High at the time.
Agree or disagree with the guy or how he ran his business, something I really respected about Jobs (I still can't believe I'm talking in the past tense) - something I respected is that he was always passionate about what he believed in.
That will be one lesson that I will take from his life - Be passionate in what you believe in. Another lesson for me to take from his life is this - Always be a visionary and don't care what anyone else thinks. Below is a commencement speech given at Stanford University in 2005 (as of this second, there have been 4 million hits on this video). Here is a quote:
"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Today starts the Kansas Patient Centered Medical Home Initiative Summit. In the video above from yesterday's podcast (you can also download the episode below), I give a preview of the meeting. Last night, there was a really fun tweet up at a local restaurant. I got to meet people from across the medical spectrum incliuding health professionals, patients, tech people, etc. Again, thanks to the Kansas PCMHI folks for the invite to attend.
What I'll be looking forward to hearing today are stories about how Kansas is delivering high quality health care, and a cheaper price, wiith higher patient satisfaction. Another aspect that is exciting to me is the use of technology during this meeting - especially social media. Did you know that this meeting is totally paperless - even no name tags? Wow. That'll be a really interesting dynamic to see how that works out.
We'll be tweeting out during the meeting using the hashtag #pcmh. I'll also be posting to the Family Mediicne Rocks facebook page, as well as my Google Plus account. I'm also going to try to use the coveritlive technology to try to capture the #pcmh tweets below. This is really going to be fun today & tomorrow!
Hey Docs out there! What if your patient's found out about your most embarrassing moment from college? What if they saw a picture of it? I was watching and listening to one of my favorite technology shows over the weekend called "The Tech Guy" with tech journalist Leo Laporte.
In the brief video above, you'll see the host take a call from an attending physician. The caller stated that back before medical school, he posed for PlayGirl magazine and now some of those pics are showing up on websites and the caller was trying to figure out how to have them taken down. It sounds like the pictures were taken in the pre-internet days. For the full exchange, click here and fast forward to the time 13:21hrs on the clock behind the host.
This call opened up the larger issue of Online Reputation which has been talked about in Health Care Social Media circles for a long time. But, it is interesting seeing what this non-medical tech journalist (and the caller) says about it:
"One of my fellow colleagues in medical school was denied a residency position because of pictures of him drinking" (1:00): I tell high school students, medical school students, and residency physicians - I tell them to search their name to see what they find. If a med school, residency, or future employer don't like what they find, that will definitely hurt your chances.
"Never post anything on the internet that you wouldn't want family, friends, teaches, and future employers to see" (2:50): This is not new advice, but definitely worth emphasizing. Anything that you place online, whether it's a picture, or blog post, or tweet, or facebook update, or anything else - not only is it out there - it is searchable and archived and available - Forever.
"If you have no internet presence at all, then anyone can control your internet presence." "Staying off the intenet doesn't protect you." (3:46): As I talk about in my Family Medicine and Social Media presentation, for most physicians, their internet presence is (right now) defined by physician rating sites. Is this what you want current and future patients to know about you? Why not start taking control of your internet reputation by doing something as simple as creating a Linked-In account - check out mine here.
Still doubting that your online reputation, or your internet presence, or your social media footprint, is important? As time goes on, patients will be using the internet more, and they will be searching for you. What will they find? Don't be defined by others. Take control of your own online reputation!
I'm very happy to be attending the Kansas Patient Centered Medical Home Initiative meeting which will be taking place on September 30 and October 1, 2011 in the Kansas City area. For those unfamiliar, this is how Kansas law defines the term "medical home:"
The definition of a medical home according to Kansas law (K.S.A. 75-7429) is: “A health care delivery model in which a patient establishes an ongoing relationship with a physician or other personal care provider in a physician-directed team, to provide comprehensive, accessible and continuous evidence-based primary and preventive care, and to coordinate the patient’s health care needs across the health care system in order to improve quality and health outcomes in a cost effective manner.”
In addition on their website, here is a more practical explanation of the PCMH model:
For an individual, the PCMH model provides a regular source of primary care, which is associated with better health outcomes at lower costs. But, the PCMH model will also improve the patient experience. For example, patients enjoy enhanced access to care through open scheduling, expanded hours and new options for communication between patients, their personal physician and practice staff.
I will be attending the meeting at the invitation of the meeting organizers, and I'd like to thank them for that. I hope to be talking to some speakers and some attendees and reporting about that on the website here. In the video above, I talked about the upcoming conference in my latest podcast. You can download my latest podcast here.
For the Kansas PCMH meeting, I invite you to follow the @KansasPCMH twitter feed. We'll also be using the hashtag #pcmh. If you want to learn more about the Kansas Patient Centered Medical Home Initiative, check out their wordpress blog. Hope you'll be able to join us on twitter on Friday & Saturday!
Everyone knows that October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. But how about the guys? September is Prostate Cancer Awareness month. In the video above, I talk about that on a local TV news interview. For more information, I invite you to read more at the National Cancer Institute site. If you enjoyed the video above, I invite you to check out other of my TV interviews at MikeSevilla.TV.
You know, I gotta be honest with you. I may get in trouble for posting this - especially since this is not my event and I did not record this. But, hey, hardly anyone reads this blog. So, I think I'll be ok - Hehe.
This short 10 minute segment above is - in my opinion - the best session from day one of the E-Patient Connections conference (#epatcon hashtag on twitter). This is a Q&A session by @Doctor_V and @KentBottles. I also invite you to check out the individual presentations by @Doctor_V (Bryan Vartabedian) and @KentBottles as well (apologies for the pre-roll ad you'll see in these videos).
In the Q&A above, one of the issues that comes up is the obligatory question, "Why are there not more doctors using social media?" And, listening to these two superstars of physician social media talk about this question was fascinating to watch. I get this question a lot as well, but I just blabber on and on without a real pertinent point. Here are some of the points that were brought out and I'll comment on them as well.
Kent says the barrier to physician social media is Fear - "The fear of not knowing what the heck you're doing and being asked to function in a totally different way in which you have not been trained.. It's fear of change." Bryan adds that time and liability are also concerns. I've said in my talks that liability, patient privacy, lack of payment for electronic communication, and time - these are the barriers in my view why physicians are not engaging in social media. How to overcome these? That is pretty tough at this point.
Another point that is brought out is passion. "You can't fake it in social media," Bryan says. I definitely agree with that. In the people that I think of - even not in the health sphere - those with passion for what they do and what they talk about - these are the champions of social media. I can even tell myself. If I'm not really into a podcast or a certain blog post, I delete it, I don't finish it, or I don't even post it. The only thing worse than social media is Really Bad social media. Just like if a patient loses confidence in you as a physician, if a reader/listener loses confidence in your social media - it's very difficult or even impossible to get that back.
An interesting section of discussion of the video above is talk about physician vulnerability and how to deal with that. Kent says that many doctors have a problem with saying "I don't know." Bryan says that doctors like to keep a "therapeutic distance" from patients in that they do not want to reveal too much about themselves. Bryan goes on to challenge some docs in his community to post to his blog, only to hear back "I don't feel comfortable saying that in public [on your blog]"
I admit that I hear that a lot from my own colleagues as well. Pretty much all doctors feel comfortable in the confines of an exam room with a one-on-one conversation with their patient. However, the possibility of placing them in a public forum - like a community organization, or the internet - many physicians shy away from this.
From a Family Medicine standpoint, it is my passion to help my FamMed colleagues try to overcome this lack of confidence feeling. I said in my talk last week that for too long, Family Medicine has let our specialty be defined by others because we have not been able and/or willing to tell our own story about why we're important to patient care and important to the health care of our country.
Thanks so much to #EPatCon for recording this and thanks to Bryan and to Kent for their very insightful comments. Especially if you're a physician reading this, I welcome you and I challenge you to leave a comment about the video above and/or my analysis and commentary. I am not an expert nor am I a pundit. I'm just a guy passionate about social media and medicine - Hoping that my physician colleagues have the courage to join the conversation!
Well, it's official kids! I am the "King of Family Medicine Social Media!" I mean, I knew that for a long time - Hehe. But, don't take my word for it. Check out the video above where new AAFP President Dr. Glen Stream jokingly makes this reference as he initiates the new twitter ID @AAFPPrez. Now, I know that 7000 twitter followers does not constitute social media royalty. But getting a shout out from the AAFP Prez is very flattering, and I'm humbled by the recognition from the podium.
I think it speaks volumes that the largest physician organization in the US (following the AMA & ACP) is embracing social media in such a major way. In addition to the president's twitter feed and facebook page, there is an AAFP Leadership blog that will be updated by "The Prez" (just a friendly suggestion - the Leadership blog should be easily accessible from the American Academy of Family Physicians front page) The video above is the rest of my impressions from the recent Orlando meeting.
It's really hard to believe that it has just been four months since the AAFP National Conference of Special Constituencies meeting. It was here that twitter really started it's AAFP momentum and started to gather that critical mass at the leadership level. This momentum continued at the annual student/resident meeting two months ago. And, just before the start of the AAFP Congress of Delegates meeting, I made a bold prediction that this Orlando meeting would be the tipping point for social media in the organization.
Right before the meeting started, it was announced that for first time ever, there would be portions of the Congress of Delegates meeting broadcast live on the internet. In addition, these sessions would be archived and could be reviewed later at AAFP.org/Congress. During the course of the meeting, I saw more and more new people tweeting out.
So, it sounds like we should be taking a victory lap. Actually, our social media work has just begun. It's really the case of "Be careful what you wish for." The next Congress of Delegates meeting is in 13 months. In this time, I, along with my other AAFP social media advocates, really have to show to the organization the value of social media.
I'm encouraging my colleagues - that for the next year - to leave comments on the AAFP leadership blog, leave comments on the AAFP President facebook page, interact on twitter, and whatever else you can think of to show the Academy that social media is a valuable communication tool.
If value is not shown, then, like other organizations and corporations, this social media movement may be over when we arrive next year in Philadelphia for the annual meeting. I'm very much looking forward to this challenge. It will be my job to continue to cheer on my colleagues and encourage/empower them to explore social media. I'm pleasantly surprised by the social media progress that we have made with AAFP in 2011. Hopefully, we can keep up this momentum in 2012 and in the future...
