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Top 5 reasons doctors should be on Twitter
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by Jordan Safirstein, MD
If this is the umpteenth article you have glossed over about the power of social media in health care, there is a good reason. Whether you are a passive or active participant, Facebook, Twitter and its fledgling relatives are here to stay — and in fact, appear to be buying up the neighborhood. Technology in our hands and pockets has made communication incredibly fast, easy and affordable. And, in the right hands, this can be an incredible boon to physicians and patients. With more than 250 million Twitter users and nearly four times as many “Facebookers” out there, it is time that medicine take cues from the business sector and gets engaged. Below, I have outlined my top 5 reasons you should start with Twitter.
- Curate your enthusiasm. Journals and pseudo-journals clutter my office mailbox with impressive volume and it has become temporally impossible to sift through the mess and find those “important” articles. How can one keep up with the must-reads? Enter: Twitter. By personally selecting who you follow, Twitter allows you to sort through the detritus and it does so in 140 characters or less. Like a New York City apartment, it has a way of forcing out the unnecessary items and leaving only what’s vitally important. Tweets will often contain a one-sentence summary and then a link to the article so you can decide for yourself if it’s worth the read. Building your list of thought-leaders from your specialty is the fun part; once you have found them, you can let the Twitter-sphere guide you to the important late-breakers.
- Keeping up with The Joneses (2.0). If you think that tweeting is for 16-year-old girls, you would have been right 3 years ago. They are so done with Twitter. But for you, it can provide amazing insight into what our current thought-leaders are reading, seeing, thinking or (occasionally in my case) eating. And if you realize that you don’t share the same topical interests that they do, then stop following them. I would list some of my favorites specifically, but I think I will save that for my next Top 5 list. Suffice to say, I knew about AliveCor before it was a thing (if you don’t know it, Google it). Ferdinand Kiemenij, MD, PhD, the father of transradial PCI, came from Amsterdam to New Jersey to deliver one keynote lecture and the whole event was orchestrated through Twitter. And, the Harvard health system currently leads the world in two things: 1) really smart people and 2) interventional cardiologists who love Twitter. Is that not proof enough?
- Second opinions. Not sure you did the right thing with that patient? Curious about what your colleagues might say about your choice of anticoagulation? It is often very reassuring to give a 140-character summary of your difficult decision and let people comment. We have power in numbers and there are some wonderfully smart and experienced cardiologists who share their thoughts. It gives you faith and reassurance in the field of medicine when colleagues offer input or support just for the sake of learning and making people better. It somehow makes the world feel smaller when you can share experiences of your #STEMI with your peers doing the same thing halfway around the country, or the world.
- Teaching patients. If you feel like being brave and drumming up a cohort of patient followers, Twitter can be an easy and effective way of delivering helpful tips to patients about the harms of bad lifestyle choices and the benefits of daily exercise. You can direct them to local events or point them to articles that will help them understand heart failure. It is also a fairly benign method of notifying patients of updates to your office and sharing about your staff
- High society. The Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions, the American College of Cardiology and The American Heart Association, for example, all have at least one, if not many, Twitter feeds. In fact, most every major medical society that you would care to hear from, or speak with, has a Twitter feed. The American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) controversy took center stage on Twitter long before it really blew up for doctors on a national level. The major societies’ Twitter feeds are a good source for important legislation that may affect us as members, changes to reimbursement, and the most-read articles from their respective journals. Often, it is the most direct way available to connect directly with influential members of the societies and find opportunities to get involved!
If you’re on Twitter, how do you use it to support your goals? If you’re not on Twitter, what questions do you have for those of us who have embraced social media? If you’re eager to get started but aren’t sure how, check out SCAI’s Social Media Help Center. Join the discussion by commenting below; tweet us at @CardiologyToday; and tweet Dr. Safirstein at @CardiacConsult.
Jordan Safirstein, MD, is the director of transradial intervention at Morristown Medical Center, Morristown, N.J.
Disclosure: Safirstein reports no relevant financial disclosures.