On the AAFP website, they ask this question "What is your best moment as a Family Physician?" It's a cool way for members to think back and reflect on those moments that keep us going when we have those tough days. At the link, there is a video from the 2013 Family Physician of the year Dr. Thomas Albani and another video with my friend Dr. Deb Clements.
At the end of Family Medicine Rocks Episode 281 today, I took a crack at this question, and the result is the video below where I reflect on a story from residency that is a moment difficult to forget. It will probably be impossible for me to dilute down to the 20 words that they are asking on the AAFP website, but this was a nice exercise for me to think back to some real rewarding moments of being a Family Physician. Enjoy!
The 4th Annual Health Care Social Media Summit opened today at the Mayo Clinic. I was honored to be a panelist at last year's meeting, and this was my first experience at the #MayoRagan Social Media Summit. Unfortunately, I could not attend this year.
The big announcement that was just made at the opening session of this year's meeting was the release of a book by the Mayo Clinic Center For Social Media. The book is entitled "Bringing The Social Media Revolution To Health Care." I'm honored to be a contributor, and I'm proud to be a part of a distinct group of thought leaders who helped in the book's creation. My essay has to do with Why Blogging Matters.
The goal of the book is to empower, encourage, and inspire health care professionals to engage in social media. The book also hopes to re-energize social media veterans to be advocates and to bring revolution to health care. I want to be clear in that I do not make a dime from this book. Net proceeds from book sales will fund patient scholarships to attend events sponsored by the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media.
The cost of the book is $9.95 in paperback and can be ordered via amazon through this link. Bulk orders (like for 5, 10, or 15) are available directly from the Center by using this form. (Just as a friendly suggestion, I know a lot of people who would be interested in a kindle version of the book as well) Thanks again to the Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media for asking me to be a contributor to the book. For those on twitter, I encourage you to follow this year's meeting with the #MayoRagan hashtag. The schedule for the 2012 meeting can be found here. Enjoy!
I had a very unique opportunity last night to have dinner with a rising star in Primary Care Advocacy. Dr. Andrew Morris-Singer is founder of Primary Care Progress which is an organization created following two significant events. First involves Dr. Andrew and what guided him toward primary care in the first place. In his standard presentation, he shares the story of how his own mother did not have a primary care physician and almost died because of our broken health care system. This event occurred when Dr. Andrew was a senior medical student.
The second event that caused the creation of the organization was the 2009 announcement at Harvard Medical School that the Primary Care Division was going to be defunded. At that point, Primary Care activists gathered to fight this decision and to try to build a new primary care vision for the school and for the community. As others around the country heard this story, other medical school campuses were interested in creating their own Primary Care Progress Chapter.
In the video below, you'll see the closing remarks made by Dr. Andrew from last night's presentation at Northeastern Ohio Medical University. There was also a great question and answer session from the students who attended the talk.
Following the close of the session, I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Andrew over dinner about Primary Care Progress and advocacy for primary care/family medicine. A realization occurred to me that to further the cause of the Family Medicine Revolution, collaboration must occur with organizations like Primary Care Progress.
The Primary Care Community must stop working in our silos and come together under the big umbrella (or big tent) of Primary Care, Practice Innovation, and concepts like the Patient Centered Medical Home. You can see from this week's National Primary Care Week and Voices For Primary Care project - there is common ground that can be found among Family Medicine, General Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and other primary care groups. We must stop working in our separate advocacy silos and come together with one Primary Care message.
Dr. Morris-Singer is a fascinating guy with lots of ideas, a strong advocacy background, and tremendous network of contacts that is growing everyday. I look forward to future collaborations with Primary Care Progress, and I thank everyone in my network who helped make the Voices for Primary Care initiative so successful. Hopefully this 2012 National Primary Care Week is a spark that will ignite a fire (Escape Fire?) of Advocacy that will carry through for the years to come...
Dr. Natasha Burgert joins me for an exclusive podcast interview on Thursday, October 11, 2012 for Family Medicine Rocks Episode 280. She is a pediatrician and the Social Media Manager for Pediatric Associates, Kansas City. Dr. Burgert is a Keynote Speaker at next week's Mayo Clinic Health Care Social Media Summit presented by Ragan Communications (Hashtag for meeting is #MayoRagan).
In the video below, Dr. Burgert offers an exclusive preview of her Keynote Presentation entitled "With social media, patient education doesn't stop in the doctor's office." In addition to this, we'll discuss on the podcast her social media origins and how she integrates social platforms into her clinical practice. I also encourage you to check out the Ragan site and the Mayo site for more specific information about the meeting in general (there is still time to register for the meeting)
I hope you can join me tomorrow, Thursday, October 11, 2012 for Family Medicine Rocks Episode 280 for the full interview. If you cannot join live, you can always download the archived podcast (via iTunes or via RSS) and listen anytime, like on the flight out to Rochester LOL. In addition, if you haven't already seen, Dr. Burgert is quoted in a New York Times story from 2 days ago entitied, "Texting The Teenage Patient."
Finally, welcome to those of you who are new to my site. I invite you to look around. I also invite you to check out my other social media outlets like on twitter, on facebook, on youtube, on linked in, and the podcast link to the show. Enjoy!
As I do when I speak to other organizations, I'm going to say that social media is not a "Magic Potion To Success" and should not be something that should be delegated to just anyone. The only thing worse than no social media is bad social media.
Also when I talk to groups who are new to social media, there is a lot of fear that they have to overcome when they are trying to get into social. I will tell the group that, yes, there is some risk, but there is also tremendous opportunity when using social tools. The most powerful way to use social media in health care is the sharing of stories - especially patient centered stories.
You probably have never heard of this movie. But, if you're in Primary Care Medicine, this may be the most important film you'll see this year. Escape Fire opens today, but only in a few theaters across the country. The great thing about the internet and social media is that you don't need to go to a theater to see this film as it is also available in the iTunes store (except for me, since I've been having problems with download this morning - Ugh)
What is this movie about? It is an examination of our broken United States health care system. You can see the trailer for the film below. Even in the brief trailer for the film, they outline the problem of increased payment for procedural medicine as opposed to primary care medicine. Of note, may of these points were brought out by Family Physician author Dr. Ted Epperly in talking about his book "Fractured." Dr. Epperly was interviewed on the Family Medicine Rocks Podcast a few weeks ago.
Reviews for the film have been positive including Roger Ebert, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Variety, and Rotten Tomatoes. Critics of the film state that this is just an informercial for "Obamacare." Who's right? Well you should check this out for yourself and make your own decision - especially if you work anywhere in the US health care system. And, if anyone sees a film made by the supporters of a different point of view, please let me know and I may talk about there film on the blog as well.
For me, the more that people try to educate the United States public about how our healthcare system works - I think that it adds to the discussion. The only way that we can change the status quo is for more and more people to better understand the problems and potential solutions to US Healthcare. I think this is a great kick off to next week's National Primary Care Week.
October 8-12, 2012 is designated National Primary Care Week which is a celebration of Primary Care medicine and an opportunity to raise awareness of how important it is for the United States. Our friends at Primary Care Progress have a great webpage with great information.
Something very cool that they have on their website is a page called "Voices of Primary Care" where primary care advocates show their support by taking a picture with a sign called "Primary Care Is..." I think this is fun, yet informational, and entertaining way to share their story. In the pic above, my sign says, "Primary Care is Hi-Tech AND High Touch..."
I have a lot of friends on what we call the Family Medicine Revolution, or #FMRevolution on twitter. I'm issuing a fun little challenge to #FMRevolution to jump on board for this year's National Primary Care Week by taking a pic saying why Primary Care and Family Medicine is important to you. Click on this link for more information and how to download your own sign.
Whether you're a medical student, resident, physician, patient, or anyone else out there, have a lot of fun with this. Be creative. And, most importantly, let your voice be heard for National Primary Care Week!
I have the honor of presenting today along with our local police department and the county prosecutor's office on the topic of Internet Safety. Presenting to our local community about social media is an intriguing challenge for me. I mean, I've presented nationally to physicians about social media, and I've talked with my patients about social media. I've only had a couple of opportunities to present locally. I'll try to take some pics and share them with you.
Among the topics that will be covered will be cyberbullying and sexting. I only recently learned of the 2008 case of 18 year old Jessica Logan from the Cincinnati, Ohio area who committed suicide over a case of sexting followed by cyberbulling after their break up. How tragic.
Welcome to those of you who are visiting the site for the first time, especially from my presentation. As promised, here are a few links which are good Social Media Resources for Parents and Teens:
The slides I used from my presentation are below. I also invite you to check out (and "like") the facebook page for this site. There's also my YouTube page, my podcast site, my twitter feed, my linked-in page, my slideshare page, and my twitter storify page. Enjoy!
In addition to last weekend's "Patient Revolution" summit, the physicians also had a "revolution" like gathering from our friends at Primary Care Progress. They had a Primary Care Leadership summit that was tracked on twitter with the hashtag #pcpsummit.
I was not physically there, but I felt like I was while following the twitter stream. I've only been following the Primary Care Progress organization for the past couple of months, and I've enjoyed what I have read. Hopefully, there will be collaborative opportunities in the future.
Last weekend, patients and patient advocates gathered for a three day event entitled The Partnership With Patients Summit. The evening of Day One was The Walking Gallery (which I still have to see in person for myself one of these days). Day Two was a long day with a fabulous set of speakers (one of which I will highlight below) and ended with the always fun Ignite format of presentations. I didn't know why the hashtag for day two was #cinderblocks, but reading here, I learned why. Day three was Health Camp Kansas City.
One of the speakers on Day Two was a Family Doc who calls himself Dr. Neu and is @NeuCare on twitter. W Ryan Neuhofel, DO is from Lawrence, Kansas and his practice is called NeuCare Family Medicine. The tweets from his presentation are below. As discussed on a previous podcast, it looks like Dr. Neu also practices in the model of Direct Primary Care. We definitely need more and more trailblazers like this. I have never met this physician in person, but it would be interesting for me to interview this innovative Family Physician on the podcast (hint, hint).
At the top of this post, you'll see an interesting metric from the past weekend's meeting. If you wanted to learn how to do twitter at this meeting right, we'll this was the meeting to be at. The number that should stick out to you is Seven Million Impressions on social media. (What's an impression? Click here.)
One other thing I wanted to point out was that look who was number three in impressions (if you can't see the graphic, I was number three in impressions), and I wasn't even on site at the meeting. Now, I know that was because of the number of twitter followers I have. But still, think about the impact and internet reach your meeting could have, even by people who are not on site with you.
Oh, and by the way, guess actually how many people were on site for the meeting. How about this? Organizers tell me that there were about 70 people for about 7,000,000 impressions. Do the math people. We'll see if today's E-Patient Connections Conference (hashtag #epatcon) in Philadelphia can keep up - Hehe. Enjoy the tweets from Dr. Neu's presentation below. Have a great week!
