TIL (Today I learned)* something new from my
nephew. He studies software
engineering and is one of those young people really plugged into the digital
world, always clicking away on his electronic devices. While I was digressing
about my twitter activity, he suggests me to try reddit, a popular social media
platform. I heard about it, but never tried it, so am now feeling a bit overwhelmed...just another “internet
thing” I have to try now, when I am barely a "joiner" on the social media ladder! Still, what do I have to lose? Perhaps I could use this new tool on my QI journey?
So here I am on reddit. I find out that "This
is a place friendly to thought, relationships, arguments, and to those that
wish to challenge those genres." The stats are impressing:
only last month, the
site had over 168 million unique visitors from over 200 countries. It’s also
interactive, and users cast votes on what discussions and stories are important (ever thought your idea was "the best ever"?).
I went on to search for "surgery", "medicine", "nursing", "healthcare" and
pretty much any combination of words in these categories. I found many lists
of tips and tricks to improve nursing tasks, questions and suggestions from
past and future patients, all organized under different medical specialties. I also found this: a freelance engineer working in orthopedics who was looking
for ideas to work on! He was asking orthopedic professionals:
- Are there any frustrations
you have with your current tooling?
- What parts of your procedures feel time-consuming, monotonous,
unintuitive, or needlessly difficult?
Even if you are skeptical, you have to
admit that this is an incredible opportunity. The ability to directly connect
with people who could improve your work cannot be ignored. And this is the
power of social media: in a new world, where information and networking is the universal
currency, being involved is not a matter of choice anymore. For example, in
healthcare, twitter has been used from matching blood donors to reporting
food-borne illness. If you like hard
data, there is proof of the social media use in medicine.
The
number of people using home health technologies will increase
from 14.3 million worldwide in 2014 to 78.5 million by 2020
(see report). Many are riding this wave: there is a strong, active medical community on twitter. If you are a
physician, you might want to check Bryan Vartabedian (twitter handle: @Doctor_V) or his blog 33 charts. He intelligently
articulates the reality of being a physician in this networked age. Will you
shape your narrative or will you let someone else do it for you?
Social media is full of possibilities, and
it is here to stay. You don’t need to be a millennial like my nephew to join and ride
the wave; you can start small and just listen to what the world is saying. Stay
private or dare to climb the social media ladder to become a critic or a
creator of content. Social media is a tool, and by using it you might find you
become better, faster, stronger and more creative. A scalpel is just a knife in
the novice’s hand. But in the hand of an expert surgeon it becomes an extension
of the mind, creating a precise and smooth incision. Only
you decide where you would like to take your skill.
Not yet convinced? Here some interesting
resources worth checking out:
See how clinicians use twitter in this concise presentation
Learn about the future of medicine from the medical futurist
Top influencers vs. top leadership study results
(*TIL is a tab on reddit, where people post what they learnt in one day)
No comments:
Post a Comment