SPOTLIGHT: Must doctors participate in social media?

I worked in a major city hospital in the operating room as an or attendant.we were understaffed,overworked and as a result got injured very badly twice in a 2 year period.I found that my colleges had absolutely no compassion or empathy for people in pain.you formalate injury recovery on a money/time model and when my injury exceeded the allotted time for injury recovery I was basically told to shut up,take this pill and go back to work.i don't like taking pills,and i think you people are the most heartless,greedy bastards I ever had the unpleasure of knowing.I think you should work on healing yourselves because I don't trust a word you people say anymore because I experienced how you "heal" people,and it's been the most horrible experience i couldn't even imagine wishing on my worst enemy.

Hi

I think this is a very interesting post.

As the world is getting smaller, flatter and more globalized, social media is the way to go in the near future.

[Those who are not convinced, one should just search for the video clip "Did You Know 4.0?" or read the detailed transcript of the video here: http://michaelhyatt.com/2009/09/how-the-media-world-is-changing%E2%80%94fast.html]

Just to trigger your imagination:
This year (2009), traditional advertising revenue is in steep decline:
Newspapers advertising is down 18.7%
TV advertising is down 10.1%
Radio advertising is down 11.7%
Magazine advertising is down 14.8%

Meanwhile, digital advertising is growing rapidly:
Mobile advertising is up 18.1%
Web advertising is up 9.2%
47% of broadcast television viewers say they would pay for ad-less programming.

Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube collectively get 250 million unique visitors per month. None of these sites existed 6 years again.

In fact, the question today is HOW "GOOGLEABLE" are you? It is part of personal and professional branding in the online community. One can test out one's online "googleability" by using the online ID Calculator here: http://www.onlineidcalculator.com/index.php.

The webpage of that online calculator even goes to claim that "Today, if you don't show up in Google, you don't exist"

Unfortunately, I believe that social media participation by healthcare professionals are very fragmented. As highlighted in this blog story by Dr. V, physicians ought to follow one another on twitter for example, to create a loud, resounding voice.

Of course, participating in social media ought to be tampered with a sense of professionalism, medical ethics and a conviction of one's professional responsibility to protect the patient's privacy. One should just take a look at this story of medical students posting pictures that compromised patient's privacy (click here: http://living.health.com/2009/09/22/medical-students-internet/#) or this original article in JAMA (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/302/12/1309).

I have personally set up my blog: emergencymedic.blogspot.com because I know emergency medicine in my country is still in its infancy and the niche area I can use to improve the development of emergency medicine in my country is through the cyber community. And today it is among the top on google search "Emergency Medicine Blog"

- Dr. Chew Keng Sheng, MD, MMED
Universiti Sains Malaysia

Follow me on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/Chew_Keng_Sheng

I think doctors are going to have to jump on the social media bandwagon if they want to compete in today's market.