Discovering the rewards of joining Twitter’s clinical medicine conversation

As an oncology fellow, I had some interesting conversations with friends and colleagues about the use of patient–physician email in clinical medicine.

Lots of typical concerns were raised — privacy, availability, how to convey complex ideas and emotions in print — and I was left thinking that email had its place, but only in the right circumstances.

I remember writing a column several years ago in which I reflected on emails I had exchanged during fellowship with one of my earliest patients.

For the past several years, this is about as far as I had permitted the intersection between clinical medicine and the modern tools of communication, let alone social networking.

Using Facebook for anything medicine-related had never made much sense to me, and I had heard of the dangers of “friending” colleagues or patients. With respect to peer-to-peer learning around clinical topics, I couldn’t imagine any of my friends on Facebook would be too interested in posts or questions about the kinds of things I do in the hospital each day. And, lastly, I just don’t invest a lot of time in Facebook on a day-to-day basis.

Twitter, on the other hand, was an entirely inaccessible platform for me until recently.

First, I couldn’t understand the concept. I had assumed that Twitter postings — called “tweets” — were just a reproduction of the functionality of a Facebook “update,” and I couldn’t understand the point of becoming preoccupied with the minute-to-minute movements of hundreds of acquaintances.

The language, too, seemed completely foreign — from “mentions” to “lists,” “hashtags” to “@” signs (I’m still not sure what those are called). Taking time to understand this language seemed a less fruitful endeavor than studying a real language that I’ve been meaning to learn, such as Spanish.

William Wood

Recently, though, several small and recent coincidences have caused me to reconsider this stance. I have a friend who directs social media efforts for a consulting firm, and he started to deconstruct the medium for me one evening at a baseball game. Another friend holds a similar position at Best Doctors, an online medical consultation service I’ve done some work with since residency.

Finally, I do understand the idea of LinkedIn, sort of a professional Facebook-like social networking site. I had been invited to a discussion area around hematology/oncology, which appeared to have some overlap with the Twitter uses of some of its participants. So I decided to take a second look at Twitter and see what value it might hold for me.

During the past week or two since I’ve started tweeting, I’ve learned that the medium isn’t nearly as inaccessible as I had thought, and the potential for what this form of communication can do has really opened my eyes. Twitter really isn’t a stripped-down form of Facebook updates, such as what I had for lunch. Rather, if used correctly, it is an incredible series of national and international conversations on a variety of topics that can facilitate lightning-fast social learning.

For me, Twitter’s clear application has nothing to do with casual social conversation and everything to do with clinical medicine and hematology/oncology. I have come a long way since my early thinking about Internet-based communication and social networking.

Here are some ways in which Twitter is already adding to my professional life, just in the past few weeks:

Expert-selected links to breaking preclinical and clinical news and data.

I’ve learned how to start “following” top physicians and researchers who have been on Twitter for a while, as well as some who are less established in the field but are voracious readers and Twitter-savvy.

I’m following Bob Orlowski (@Myeloma_Doc), Anas Younes (@DrAnasYounes), Mike Thompson (@mtmdphd) and Ryan Madanick (@RyanMadanickMD), just to name a few. This list undoubtedly will grow quickly.

These individuals tweet links to interesting news stories, abstracts and articles that are useful in part because they already have been directly vetted by thought leaders who have considered them to be important. This keeps me up to speed and “in the know” in an efficient way.

National dialogue around topics of interest.

Whether related to health care and social media (#hcsm), medical education (#meded) or interesting topics generally (#MDChat), I can follow — and participate in, if I’m interested — a series of ongoing interesting conversations that are continually updated and filled with links to important outside commentary that underscores the points being made.

I am only beginning to search for and identify more narrowly focused conversations around topics of more direct interest, such as hematology, bone marrow transplant, adolescent and young adult cancer and international oncology. I think I will find a few now, and many more will emerge in coming months.

Watching today’s news as it happens.

In one recent Twitter conversation, a participant linked to a webcast of the CMS Care Innovations summit in Washington D.C. The summit included a lineup full of policy experts and thought leaders, including Marilyn Tavenner, Atul Gawande and Amy Abernethy.

I was able to pull up the webcast and keep it running in the background so I could tune in to speakers of particular interest. I learned a lot, and I wouldn’t have known the event was happening — or how to tune in live — outside of the direction on Twitter.

I can’t say I spend a ton of time on Twitter. I have many other things on which I need to spend a lot more time, from clinical care to my research agenda to time with my family. But, for the limited engagement that I do have with the medium, the rewards already have been many.

I look forward to tailoring my involvement so I can make the experience an even higher yield for me, and maybe even to using the platform as a vehicle for patient engagement, which others have successfully done.

In any event, for those who are interested, check it out and considering tweeting. Feel free to follow me (@WoodBD) and join the conversation.