So, I've been in the midst of changing over my domain name company to Hover.com from this other company. And. man, it's been tough to do this thing myself. Sheesh.
Just wanted to give a big shout out both to Squarespace and to Hover customer service for tolerating my questions about how to switch domain companies and now to link to this Squarespace blog. I'll be changing over more domains to Hover. Thanks Squarespace & Hover!
So, if you know me, you know I'm not afraid to fail. HA! I've never done a Google Hangout, until tonight! I will be joined by my pals and Family Physicians - Dr. Gerry Tolbert and Dr. Kim Yu. We're going to have a discussion on a variety of topics including the following:
Factoring in technical difficulties, the Family Medicine Rocks Google Hangout should be up and running around 9pm Eastern Time at this link. Don't worry, I'll record the thing and make it available on my youtube page.
Yes, it would be helpful if you're already on Google+ so that you have the ability to leave comments and make fun of us. If this works, then I may have other Google Hangouts on Family Medicine and Primary Care topics. We'll see what happens!
Politico will be holding a Health Care Breakfast Briefing tomorrow, March 19, 2013 beginning at 8am Eastern TIme. The topic will be "Defining The Scope Of Practice." You can watch the free live video stream at this link.
The panelists include the following: Wanda Filer, MD (AAFP Board of Directors), Angela Golden, DNP (President of American Association of Nurse Practitioners), and Donna Shalala (former secretary of HHS).
There will definitely be verbal fireworks between the AAFP and the AANP representatives that started with the AAFP Report "Primary Care For the 21st Century" stating that Independent Practice NPs "threatens to splinter care and undermine PCMH." Of course, the AANP disagreed with this report and released their own statement. There have been other opinions about this disagreement on Modern Healthcare and KevinMD. In addition, the current AAFP President Elect wrote this letter to a recent Bloomberg News Article.
Not only will there be strong opinions on stage, but also on social media as well. A recent example of this was the twitter stream during the live broadcasts of the Escape Fire film on CNN using the #RescueHealthcare hashtag. As I stated in a previous post, I believe that Family Medicine and Primary Care missed an opportunity to be proactive in portraying a positive message for our specialty.
I hope that the discussion does not degrade to personal or professional attacks on stage and on social media. Primary care physicians and primary care nurses must both build their workforces. We can't build one at the expense of the other. The Patient Centered Medical Home focuses on tailoring care to the patient by deploying a team of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, physical therapists, sub specialists, and any other health professional who work together to meet the patient's needs.
So, again, I'm challenging the Family Medicine community to not only tune in tomorrow morning at 8am for the live video stream, but also I challenge the Family Medicine community to be proactive and participate on twitter using the #ProHCBB hashtag in addition to #AAFP to help spread the message. Will #FMRevolution rise to the occasion? We'll see...
Match Day 2013 was two days ago, and I've had a couple days to reflect to come up with some kind of meaning, if anything, to those events. Here are some random thoughts.
Memories of my own Match Day: Even though it's been 15 years since my own Match Day, as a physician, I still have this excitement for the coming of this particular day. I can definitely relate to what these medical students are going through. Best of luck to all the future graduates!
Good day for Primary Care: Even though there were more US medical students matched in Family Medicine versus one year ago, there was a 3.4 percent decrease versus 2012. The AAFP President is hopeful, but states that "Our Work Is Far From Finished." I would agree with that assessment.
Kudos To @TheNRMP twitter account: Whomever is behind the NRMP twitter account is doing a great job. I checked them out even a few days before Match Day. I enjoyed how they responded to students and to organizations when tweeting about Match related activities. And on Match Day itself, the account was sending congratulations and encouraging social media collaborations. Well done!
The Last Fun Match Day on Social Media: I was in my office hours the afternoon of Match Day, and it was great to follow. To me, it felt like New Year's Eve/Day in that you could see when the medical schools were opening their Match Day envelopes, almost like by time zone. And then you would see the excitement on twitter, and see the pics that were being shared. Unfortunately, I think this will be the last year of that. As Match Day was winding down on twitter, I could see some corporations and medical industry organizations invading some of the hashtags - "Congratulations to those who matched, and don't forget about our medically related product." I predict that you'll see that more next year, and that's sad...
Here's why you should listen to Family Medicine Rocks Podcast Episode 298: My guest, medical student Michael B Moore, took his medical school entrance exam (MCAT) in Qatar in the middle east while serving in the US Army. Yes, really. Mike shares this story along with other pre-medical school stories during the first half of the podcast.
If you haven't figured it out, Mike is who you would call a non-traditional student. While in the Army, he was encouraged to go to Physician Assistant school. And, if you're wondering, yes, Mike shares his thoughts on the role of mid-level providers on the patient care team.
Other topics we discussed include why he chose an osteopathic (DO) medical school versus an allopathic (MD) medical school, the shortcomings of medical education, and his thoughts on the match process. Our last part of the conversation talks about geeky topics like his interest in NASA tweet ups and being a TedX organizer.
In the video above, Mike shares why he believes that Family Medicine needs to embrace Social Media. Following my chat with Mike, I share some thoughts of my own Match Day years ago.
Welcome to those of you who are visiting this website for the first time! In addition to listening to the entire audio podcast in the player below, you can also download the show here and listen anytime! I also encourage you to check out my other social media links like twitter, Facebook, itunes podcast link, linked-in, and youtube. Enjoy!
You never hear the words "pope" and "change agent" in the same sentence, until this week with the election of Pope Francis. And, it really got me thinking, "Can one man really exhibit change in a huge organization like the Catholic Church?" Of course, time will tell, but there are many in the media and at the grassroots who are hopeful that change will happen.
If you think about it, all of us are really like this new pope. How? One of the toughest jobs in advocacy is trying to exhibit change from within an organization. For us Social Media Evangelists, the toughest crowd to convince about social media are our own professional colleagues - right DocForeman? I mean, it's easy to be a speaker at a national meeting where I am "preaching to the choir." A lot of social media is about being in your own echo chamber where the people you're speaking to already buy into your ideas.
The real challenge, which sometimes makes you controversial, is to talk negatively about your own tribe in an attempt to exhibit change. This happened to me earlier this week when I wrote a previous post, in which I made less than positive comments about my own community. When you tell people what they want to hear, there are lots of twitter retweets, facebook share, blog comments, and e-mail messages. With my post, there was very little of that. The echo chamber didn't like it, and the silence was deafening.
I wish all the best to the new pope as he starts his new job. The toughest job in social media (as well as any change agent) is to take on your own community and your own tribe, to reform from within. It's not pretty and usually messy. But, if done right, your vision for change will come true.
In about half an hour, Match Week 2013 begins. What is this? This is the annual "Super Bowl" for medical schools in which senior medical students find out where they will be continuing their medical education after medical school graduation. Today, residency programs will find out if they filled out all of their slots for next year's intern class - a stressful day for residency programs.
This week is a Celebration for Medical Education, especially for medical schools and residency programs. It's also a week where medical schools will compete for the best Social Media marketing out there. That's where it is fun for me (and for you) to watch.
The video above is from the 2012 Match Day celebration from Eastern Virginia Medical School where it is like a Talent Show competition as students find out where they matched for residency. This is a crazy video! Match Day for the medical students is Friday. So, watch twitter and facebook for all the creative videos that will happen at the med school level. My guess is that the Harlem Shake will be the Flash Mob music of choice this year.
Best of luck to all the Medical Students and Residency programs out there as you being Match Week 2013. I hope all of you blow us away with your Social Media presentations this week!
I am just so upset right now, I could scream. Why? Because, in my humble opinion, the Family Medicine and Primary Care Communities missed a huge opportunity to start to win the "hearts and minds" of the general public - using social media.
What am I talking about? Well, tonight, on CNN, was the Premiere of the film called "Escape Fire" which does a great job of describing our broken health care system, including rewarding the payment of procedures (current Fee For Service system), not emphasizing/paying for prevention, and emphasizing the use of pharmaceutical drugs instead of other non-drug treatments.
One of the great things about social media is the ability to watch something on television, and then comment on it in real time - in this case using the hashtag #RescueHealthcare. I've been monitoring the comments, and there is a lot of wrong information out there in the twitter stream.
Here is the Missed Opportunity: Wouldn't it have been nice if the Primary Care and Family Medicine community organized to come together and hit twitter right as the Escape Fire movie started - and be advocates for Primary Care and Family Medicine. Don't get me wrong, there were people who did that, and shout out to our pals Kevin Bernstein, Kim Yu, Mark Ryan, and Ajoy Kumar holding down the fort for #FMRevolution.
But, how cool would it be for people like AAFP Board members or hearing from the Primary Care Progress organization during that twitter stream to give great evidence based health policy facts (like lots of people tweeting out things like links to Barbara Starfield's work supporting Family Medicine)? Instead, the AAFP organization only emphasized the appearance of the AAFP President on a post-film panel (for a 7 minute segment). Don't get me wrong, this is important. But, it's just another example of how much work needs to be done at the organization level to show the potential power of social media as an opinion maker just by the use of a twitter stream - like this organization did. We need to be more Proactive to tell our story!
At the organizational level, whether it be the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, or other organizations, they always state that partnering with patients and with the general public is essential to bring about health policy and legislative change. In my opinion, a huge opportunity was missed tonight. And, hopefully, the lesson learned is this: Yes, Social Media IS a viable and an important vehicle by which to partner with patients and with the public to tell the story of Primary Care and Family Medicine to bring about health policy and legislative change!
Thanks to Dr Kevin Pho, founder of KevinMD.com, for being my guest on Family Medicine Rocks Podcast Episode 294. We discussed his new book, "Establishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide For Physicians And Medical Practices" which is scheduled to be released in the next couple of weeks.
In the video above, Dr. Pho describes what he tells physicians and hospitals about Online Reputation and why it should be important to them. In addition, in our interview, Dr. Pho shares strategies on how physicians and hospitals can take control of their Online Reputation.
You can listen to the entire audio podcast in the player below, or download here and listen anytime. Welcome to those of you who are visiting this site for the first time. In addition to this site, I encourage you to check out my other social media links on twitter, facebook, iTunes for podcast, you tube, and linked-in. Enjoy!
Kevin Pho, MD, founder of the KevinMD.com site, will be my guest on Family Medicine Rocks Podcast Episode 294 on Thursday, February 21, 2013 at 2:30pm Eastern Time for a live interview on BlogTalkRadio.
The topic will be his new book "Establishing, Maintaining, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices." You'll see a video preview of the book below. One of the cool things of the book are the physicians who shared stories for the book. In addition, there are a great group of people who have written endorsements for the book. (Disclaimer: I wrote an endorsement for the book, which you'll see in the link above).
In the video above, you'll see a portion of an interview from about a year ago for the podcast. It was so long ago, I was still calling myself "Doctor Anonymous." HA! Hope to see you for the show this week!
