I’ve always suggested that doctors have an obligation to be part of online dialog.  We have a responsibility to make content.

But is that what I should be selling to my colleagues?

Perhaps getting doctors to listen is the critical first step to social media adoption by doctors.  The idea hit home with me while watching this clip of Susannah Fox’s presentation to the American College of Surgeons.  “It’s okay to listen,” she told the surgeons.  Susannah understood that most of the audience wasn’t even to the first rung of the Forrester Ladder.  Watching and lurking come before participation.  You have to be able to hear before you can speak.

And once doctors listen maybe they’ll speak up.

This is easier said than done, of course.  We can gather an audience locally and preach the power of social dialog.  We can share what we do individually.  But in the end it’s hard to teach an old doc to interact with let alone listen via new medium.  Time, generational pull, and market forces will prove to be the greatest influences of physician adoption.

Image via brsev