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Permalink Reply by Peter Jones on January 14, 2010 at 10:08am

OK, He's not in the community yet, but KevinMD responded to this question already, a post in his newsletter:

How social media can make physicians better doctors

"Yet, after seeing patients all day, do physicians really want to spend a significant portion of whatever free time they have in the evening answering informal, non-specific medical questions online and dispensing general healthcare advice to friends and patients? The time is quickly approaching when physicians are going to have to confront this and other questions prompted by patients’ evolving, technology-driven expectations regarding the extent to which they have access to their healthcare providers and how and when they can communicate with them."

My comment: While I applaud the innovative perspective of Dr. Pho here, I'm wondering why the implied actor and audience must be the physician? The perspective seems to be that the doctor should consider their role and voice in the social media world. As if that's what it means "to be social." Why not view the group practice as a social resource center? Perhaps nurses or a certain practice nurse add the social media role?

Revealing a patient relationship and discussng health advice on Twitter could open the doctor to certain liabilities. How do you ensure that the context of advice given is meaningful yet not directive? Not every doctor is going to be able to write like Dr. Weil.

Nurses are trained and aware of the kinds of situations that occur with patients in pre-visit and post-visit scenarios. They may be the better representatives of a practice, unless the tweeting and FBing is abut building clientele and not helping specific individuals.

What do you think? I know there are some "social docs" on the community. In a care context, do you think KevinMD has a real point or is this asking for attention overload?

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