• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

33 Charts

  • About
    • What is 33 Charts?
    • Bryan Vartabedian MD
  • Blog
  • 33mail
  • Foci
    • Social/Public Media
    • Physicians
    • Patients
    • Hospitals
    • Information
    • Process/Flow
    • Technology
    • Digital culture
    • Future Medicine
  • The Public Physician
Digital culture, Physicians, Social/Public Media

Doctors and the Rise of Authority Creep

January 8, 2018 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: 2 minutes

This comment was posted on Twitter by a physician:

Not referring to anyone specifically but the sentiment that in the era of SoMe it’s all too easy to publicize opinion only w/o doing the hard work of original research. New ideas are great. New ideas that are appropriately tested are even better.

This is something that I’ve seen more of lately. I think of it as a authority creep. As more physicians of the right name and rank appear in public spaces, they carry with them a dated sense of authority concerning who is deserving of an opinion.

A couple of thoughts:

My voice is not a function of what you think is worthy. It’s funny that those physicians who for many years avoided social engagement now want to shape themselves as the arbiters of what constitutes appropriate public conversation. But my voice is not a function of what you think is worthy. Permission-based thinking marked the first few hundred years of medicine’s history. Not so much anymore.

Publication is the beginning of peer review. The insight that comes with publicized opinions represents a new type of post-publication peer review. It used to be that publication represented something of an endpoint or hard stop. Increasingly it’s the beginning of a process of public oversight and review important in determining what’s relevant. And the conversation does not belong to those who have created the research.

As I suggested in 2011 in Physician Thought Leaders in the Digital Age:

In medicine it used to be that few physicians spoke and the rest listened. But ability of the physician audience to have the mike allows those previously shut out to become influential. Solid thinking no longer needs permission to be shared. Expect to see regular doctors emerge as influential not based on their connections within ‘the society,’ but on the strength and novelty of their ideas. Old world connections within dated institutions will hold weight only with those desperately banding together, unwilling to do anything different.

Image modified via Maxim Mogilevskiy on Flickr

Related Articles

  • Beware Invisible Doctors
  • Physician Thought Leaders in the Digital Age
  • Physician Access and Time Creep

Tagged With: Authority

Related Articles

  • Beware Invisible Doctors
  • Physician Thought Leaders in the Digital Age
  • Physician Access and Time Creep

Primary Sidebar

Bryan Vartabedian, MD

Bryan Vartabedian, MD
Bryan Vartabedian is the Chief Pediatrics Officer at Texas Children’s Hospital North Austin and one of health care’s influential
voices on technology & medicine.
Learn More

Popular Articles

  • The Fate of Fired Cleveland Clinic Resident Lara Kollab
  • Cures Act Final Rule – How It Will Change Medicine
  • 12 Things About Doximity You Probably Didn’t Know
  • Should Physicians Give Their Cell Phone Number to Patients?
  • Doximity Dialer Video – Telemedicine’s Latest Power Player

Sign up for 33mail newsletter

Featured Articles

Context Collapse and the Public Physician

Health Care and the Visibility-Value Continuum

Reactive and Creative Spaces

Doctors and social media: Damned if you engage, damned if you don’t

The Rise of Medicine’s Creative Class

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

Footer

What is 33 Charts?

With a mashup of curated and original content that crosses the spaces of digital health, media, communication, technology, patient experience, digital culture, and the humanities, 33 charts offers unique insight and analysis on the changing face of medicine.

Founded in 2009 as a center of community and thought leadership for the issues doctors face in a digital world, 33 charts was included in the National Library of Medicine permanent web archive in 2014.
Learn More

Foci

  • Digital culture
  • Digital Health
  • EHR/Health IT
  • Future Medicine
  • Hospitals
  • Information
  • Patients
  • Physicians
  • Process/Flow
  • Quality
  • Social/Public Media
  • Technology

Copyright © 2023 · 33 Charts · Privacy Policy