But I’m not sure we need it.
We may want to think about why we need a Twitter discussion group and what we’d like to get out of it.
I look at tweetchats like I look at medical meetings: I go to see old friends in one place. Most of what’s discussed was public long before the meeting. The most interesting stuff happens in the hallway. With that said I still go to medical meetings. But it’s usually to cultivate relationships. And tweetchats do accomplish that.
I like to participate in tweetchats to see who shows up. I like to look at how people behave, how they meet the challenge of open-ended questions in the limits of 140 characters. It’s really interesting to watch those who think they have the answers. I like to see who actually takes the process so seriously that they can’t crack a joke and have a little fun (this tells me the most).
But I have to ask: Is what happens during a tweetchat parallel broadcasting or conversation? I might suggest that the nature of the medium facilitates parallel broadcasting. You have to admit that it’s hard to make substantive commentary in 140 characters with 20 people simultaneously answering. The process devolves into a battle of one-liners where the effort is to keep up rather than absorb and learn. Sub-dialogs evolve that, while interesting, distract from the core topic.
Mitch Joel at Six Pixels of Separation wrote and interesting post last week suggesting that despite how we may think of ourselves and our digital world, real conversation may be going out of style. We’re devolving into a community of broadcasters. It’s worth a read and may have some corollary to this discussion about twitter meetings.
The thing is that while there may be measureable benefits from tweetchats we have to decide whether this represents the best use of time for physicians (or anyone for that matter) who’s social involvement is primarily limited by the clock. I struggle to maintain a balance of commitments to my family, my patients and the development of new ideas. One hour is one core idea that never gets shared on this blog. But everyone’s different. And for me the frustrations of Twitter as a discussion platform outweigh the benefits in many cases.
We shouldn’t confuse the importance of getting doctors together with the importance of getting doctors together for dialog on Twitter. Let’s not forget the dynamic conversation that can happen around blogs when everyone participates. This week we saw KevinMD take a step to organize dialog within LinkedIn.
Tweetchat for doctors will have its day. When it starts I’ll be there. But look for me in the hallway.
Image via Icontexto
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I’m not a doctor but I’ve worked with 1000s as they implement EMRs. I’m interested in the Tweetchat idea as a way of communicating to MDs who are considering (or confused about) the process, things to consider. I have a wealth of knowledge but I have had not figured out how to help those who need the assistance. I know they’re out there, I meet them every time I go to a different project.
Maybe I could hang out in the hallway and answer questions?
The trick is, Andrea, that everyone and their uncle is interested in using social platforms to reach doctors. And while your input might be really valued it’s easy to see how a public discussion could attract marketers with selfish intentions. It almost begs the question whether a dialog like this might best be done in a physician-only forum. I’m doing work with a new physician network, iMedExchange that may represent a solution to this issue.
As a physician who has been working to figure out the role of Social Medial in healthcare (and an active participant in the #HCSM healthcare communications and social media chat on Sundays) I *do* see value in these approaches. I agree that the discussion flows fast and furious, and that one needs to work hard to keep up and to gather interesting ideas from the stream. But I think it can work. From my discussions that began off the Tweetchat I’ve helped set up a blog to dig further into the role of social media in healthcare (in effect, to slow down and more deeply consider the #HCSM chats) with 2 other #HCSM folks, am working to submit an abstract for an oral presentation re: social media communications in health care to present at a professional organization meeting, and have bounce around some research ideas.
I recognize this might be b/c the #HCSM chat brings in a good crowd that returns week after week, but a doc chat could do the same.
Finally: too many docs are afraid to engage in SocMed for various reasons (concerns about privacy, liablity, etc). Having conversations (or parallel broadcasts) with other docs–or watching such conversations unfold–may help ease their levels of concern to some extent.
Interesting perspective. I do wonder if a slightly longer-form medium might allow us to reach the same goals more efficiently.
“The process devolves into a battle of one-liners where the effort is to keep up rather than absorb and learn. Sub-dialogs evolve that, while interesting, distract from the core topic.”
Not to mention that most of them will be following each other …and their followers who are not physicians may very well be following many of them …and the retweeting that takes place in these chats, that pretty much fill up twitter feeds with the same comment over and over and over and over and over again … is it really productive at all?
Agreed. But again, there is some benefit to be had. We have to weigh how much benefit for an hour lost engaging in other media.
Bryan:
Count me in, a great idea evolving as early adopters get their training wheels on.
Might we re-purpose ‘DocTweets’ (http://doctweets.com) for this community. I registered the handle with both Twitter and FriendFeed as well (though for some reason Twitter has suspended). The proxy might be StockTwits (see: http://stocktwits.com) though health care focused.
Lets discuss!