Sometimes I have downtime in clinic and I peek in on Twitter.
Is this a problem?
It’s an interesting question because I think there are considerations for physicians and other health professionals.
Let me say first of that the needs of my kids (in my home and in my clinic) are always met before my communication needs. Professional calls (barring emergencies), personal calls, email and social exchange of all types happen only when patient care obligations have been reasonably met.
With that said, there are a couple of things to think about:
Social media is just another form of professional communication. We should see it no differently than the telephone or email which, as we all know, are frequently misused. To the uninformed, it’s assumed that social dialog is frivolous dialog. But my social feeds are at the core of of my communication. Ultimately these platforms will eclipse email as our core mode of communication.
Communication and patient care are not mutually exclusive. I hear it all the time: I would rather have my doctor spend more time with me than writing a blog or using Twitter. Of course, who wouldn’t? But one does not happen at the exclusion of another. Every heavily engaged social physician I know writes on his or her own time. Clinic isn’t shortened in order to create time to communicate. The two will always need to coexist.
Perception trumps reality… To an extent, what patients perceive may be as important as what what’s occured. If a patient believes that your social dialog occurrs at the expense of their care, that’s a problem. That goes for the occasional tweet during 30 minutes of downtime as well as your weekend on call. While we have to educate patients about what we’re doing, we need to be sensitive to their perceptions.
…Unless reality trumps perception. Anyone who shares conversations understands that transparency comes at a cost. When bits of your professional dialog are public, you will be judged. But there will be those who misunderstand or take commentary out of context. This is a well-known risk of Twitter’s 140 character limitation. But it’s important for doctors and lurking patients alike to understand that the potential for misunderstanding doesn’t mean we stop talking.
As we move from the idea of ‘social media as goof-off medium’ to ‘social media as tool of communication,’ there will be growing pains. The adoption of real time physician communication will draw attention to the issue of boundaries. A lot of this will come down to the expectations we have of our providers and our understanding of how and when social dialog should take place.
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I think this is an interesting conversation that’s happened across a lot of professional spheres about 2 years ago, and which medicine is still lagging behind on. I haven’t met many current doctors who use twitter, facebook, or – and this is shocking to me – even have a personal website! In my generation, you google a doctor’s name and determine whether you want to go to them. With all of the “rate a doc” pages that poke up, why wouldn’t a doctor want to be in control, to at least some degree, of what their internet image is by having a web presence?
I’m going to be interested to see what happens in the next few years as the Gen Y-ers graduate residency and start setting up practice. Social media for physicians is a very interesting subject.
I might throw a wrench in the works and suggest that doctors don’t need personal websites anymore. But that’s the subject of another post.
Another interesting post, Bryan.
An accidental exchange on Twitter today revealed how easy it is to misunderstand the complex thoughts behind a tweet, as when the link is missing in a user’s reply. So I guess we’re on a learning curve.
Have a great Thanksgiving!
Wish I had some downtime in between patients !!! Jealous! Done with twitter for now… blog too. Where does all the time go ???????????
Very interesting ~I suppose the idea that doctors can become accessible to the patient is really the core of this conversation. Can a patient be social with their doctors or is it an awkward invasion of privacy? And if the doctors don’t want patients to find them, should they use pen names for their private communications? I think many patients would take advantage of a doctors social contacts. But what of the reverse? I happen to have a unique relationship with my son’s GI doc – I have 3 sons who have been transplanted to resolve UCD defects. I write a blog and our GI doc follows it daily. I have open email access to our GI doc. We have become friends, but I am not an awkward stalker. He trusts my judgement and I his in our social contact. I don’t think every patient/doctor relationship can evolve to be a social one.
As an aside, it’s interesting that I stumbled onto your blog, (via a Twitter ReTweet, no less) Baylor has the only lab that does prenatal ammnio testing for our UCD (Citrullinemia) Interesting post, I look forward to reading more.
~Amy
This is what i Made.
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