I recently wrote a paper on social media with some of my colleagues at Kaiser Permanente: Ted Eytan, MD @tedeytan, Rahul Parikh, MD @docrkp, Vince Golla @vincegolla, and Sara Stein, MD @sarasteinmd. In the article, “Social Media and the Health System,” we argue that the benefits of engaging patients and colleagues in social media outweigh potential risks.
The two most common reasons that physicians resist participating on blogs, Twitter and Facebook are: 1. Fear of liability. 2. Lack of compensation for the time invested.
If we would like more physicians to be part of the conversation, then we’ll need to find ways to overcome these barriers.
What has your experience been like interacting with physicians on social media? Is there a place for physicians on sites such as Twitter and Facebook?
For physicians reading this post, you can also join the over 160 others who have commented on this article on Sermo.
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The doctors should use social media because it saves time while improving his/her relationship with patients. They could write about or link to items that they keep repeating to every other patient every day. Then they would point the patient to their opinion.
Using social media can give docs a chance to connect patients to useful resources. Hopefully we will see more embrace of SM. Also, many patients are looking to social media to find info about their providers, so those who are not engaged will be missing out.
There are a great many benefits for a physician to get involved with social media. Getting their names out where potential patients can find them is one. They might also create their own web presence online that they could monetize to insure they are compensated for their time.