• 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
Physicians, Social/Public Media

Social Media: Like Waiting Room Furniture

August 10, 2013 By Bryan Vartabedian · Reading Time: < 1 minutes

iStock_000009325823XSmallOver the past 4 years every presentation done by a doctor involving new media has involved some statistic of social media use.  Every year the numbers of doctors using Facebook has risen.  Every year more doctors seem to step out in public with Twitter.  The graphs just keep going up.

We’ll soon approach the point where it’s no longer relevant to measure.  Sure use will achieve further growth going forward.  And the data creatives will always find something to measure.  But independent of whether we accept it as part of our core workflow, anyone with their head anywhere but squarely in the sand has largely accepted the reality of public communication.

Parsing personal and professional use will never offer a meaningful answer as our personal and public identities become more difficult to discern (this is like trying to understand what percentage of our IRL or phone conversations are professional versus personal). Those refusing to connect with anyone beyond their 8 x 10, fluorescent-lit exam rooms will ultimately fall over and die.  Those coming into medicine will see networked dialog with patients and peers as nothing other than an operational reality.  Life will go on.  Connected.  Social media will be like a piece of furniture in our environment.

When we stop counting, we’ve arrived.

There was once a time when measured mobile phone adoption.  I haven’t seen one of those studies in a while.  And the last I checked everyone’s mobile and most folks are back to calling them phones.

Related Articles

  • Social Media: Managing Expectations with Doctors
  • The Waiting Room
  • Doctors and Social Media: Failure is Inevitable

Tagged With: Social media

Related Articles

  • Social Media: Managing Expectations with Doctors
  • The Waiting Room
  • Doctors and Social Media: Failure is Inevitable

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

100,000 Connected Lemmings

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

Context Collapse and the Public Physician

Will the Future Need Doctors?

The Case for New Physician Literacies in the Digital Age

  • 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