As 2010 draws to a close, a lot of people are starting to focus on the New Year.  New Year’s always brings new resolutions and one of them for many healthcare professionals is to get involved in social media.  By social media I am referring to blogging, facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.  You may be thinking about social media for your medical practice or using it for your own personal professional reasons.

It feels a little awkward writing a guide to social media when I am still a newbie to this whole thing.  I started posting to the Entegration Blog barely 10 months ago.  And I just starting using Twitter (@EntegrationBlog) 2 months ago.  So you can see I am clearly not an expert on the subject. With that said, I will offer up some advice from the perspective of a newbie.

OK, so you want to start using social media but are not quite sure where to begin.  Start with reading the AMA’s recently published guide to social media.

Sit and watch

The first thing I recommend you do is sit back and watch.  Find a few people to follow that you are interested in. I offer some recommendations below.  Read their blogs,analyze their writing style and read the comments that they get on their posts.  You will see that some topics trigger a lot of responses and other topics are ignored. Make mental notes about this activity. Also notice  that some comments are negative and others are positive. Ask yourself what you would do if you posted a topic and received some negative feedback.

The next step is to sign-up on Twitter.  Create a Twitter account and start following people that interest you. Again, sit back and observe.  Twitter is a lot different than blogs.  It is not as easy to get your point across in 140 characters.  But yet some people use Twitter with skill and precision.  I believe it takes a while to figure Twitter out but once you do you will see it is a great resource for information.

Facebook is another resource that you want to observe.  I recommend that you read this post on the doctor-patient relationship and facebook.

Questions that you should ask yourself regarding facebook are:

• Are you interested in setting up up a facebook page for your practice?
• Are you interested in setting up a personal facebook page?  If so, are you going to friend your patients or colleagues?

I decided early on that I would setup a facebook page that was purely for personal interaction.  I don’t friend clients, vendors or business associates.  I use my LinkedIn account for all business related interaction.  I find this works best for me.  In no way is this a recommendation.  You have to decide for yourself what works best for you.

Baby steps

Once you get comfortable observing how people are using blogs, Twitter, facebook, LinkedIn you are ready to make the next step. The next step is to get your “online voice”.  If you read a post on a blog that interests you, leave a comment.  Start to interact with the blogs that you are reading.  The first comment may be a little frightening.  I remember the first comment I left on a blog, I checked the spelling and grammar at least 10 times before hitting submit.  I also checked, over and over, to see if someone responded to my comment.  After the first comment the rest are easy.  As a blogger, I can tell you that getting comments and feedback is greatly welcomed.  Start interacting with the blogs that you read and start to get a feel of putting your thoughts and words out there for everyone to read.

Once you are comfortable with Twitter start to Tweet yourself.  If you read a blog or article that is interesting, Tweet about it.  Twitter is all about sharing information so go ahead and share.  You can also retweet other people’s post and pass it along to the people that are following you.  At first you may not have anyone following you but eventually as you tweet and retweet, people interested in your content will start to follow you.  You may have to follow a lot of people and tweet for a while before others are interested in you but trust me it will happen.

The same goes for facebook.  ”Like” other medical practices or friend other colleagues (if you decide that you are comfortable with that).  Observe how they utilize facebook.  Interact with these resources or simply observe the interaction until you are comfortable. You will decide what you want and do not want to do on facebook, which is extremely important if you decide to start your own facebook page or personal account.

Get involved in LinkedIn discussion groups.  Add your comments to on-going discussions or start a new discussion.  You will see that LinkedIn is a great resource for online conversation and sharing of ideas.

Dive in

Once you get a good understanding about how the whole social media works you may want to dive in. Some people choose to start their own blog to share their ideas.  Others use facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to share ideas without blogging.  Some use all types of social media to get their message out.  There is no right or wrong answer.  Do what you are most comfortable with.

If you do decide to start a blog here are a few pointers:

• Identify who your audience is.  Who do you want to read your blog?  Write to that audience every time you post a blog.
• Don’t feel pressured to write a book each time you blog.  Keep it short and to the point.
• Coming up with ideas is not easy.  If you don’t have a good idea don’t force it.
• If you read someone else’s blog that you feel is interesting to both you and your audience share it. Summarize it or analyze it by adding your input to the blog.  Make sure you give credit to the author and provide a link or reference to the original post.

Once you start blogging make sure you share your blog posts via Twitter, LinkedIn and facebook.

I would like to point out that I have only mentioned blogging, Twitter, LinkedIn and facebook as sources of social media.  There are many other sources that you can utilize.  These are the only one’s that I use and feel comfortable discussing but do not limit yourself.

Final thoughts

Here are some final thoughts I have:

• Utilizing social media is not easy.  It takes a lot of time and work.
• At first you may feel like you are talking to yourself.  You will probably be correct.  It takes time to gain an audience.
• Post interesting material and utilize the various methods of sharing information and you will see the results.
• Enjoy yourself.  At first it may seem like additional work that you don’t have time for but hopefully you will start to enjoy it and look forward to blogging, twittering or facebooking.

Some people to follow:

• Kevin Pho M.D. – self proclaimed “Social media’s leading physician voice”.  His site provides excellent information and insight.
  • Blog: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/
  • Twitter: @kevinmd
• Bryan Vartabedian –  aka Doctor_V.  His Twitter profile states “Dispatches from the frontline of social media and medicine”.  An excellent resource and someone who clearly gets the social media thing.
  • Blog: http://www.33charts.com
  • Twitter: @Doctor_V
• John Lynn – I find John’s stuff to be very interesting and informative.  He is on the front-line in terms of EHR implementations, HIPAA and general healthcare IT related topics.   His writes several blogs and utilizes Twitter with a couple of different accounts.
  • Blog: http://www.emrandhipaa.com/
  • Blog: http://www.emrandehr.com/
  • Twitter: @ehrandhit
• Mary Pat Whaley -her goal is to “provide medical practice managers a place to find resources and information”.  She does a great job at achieving her goal.
  • Blog: http://www.managemypractice.com/
  • Twitter: @mpwhaley

I read a post by Bob Coffield over at the Health Care Law Blog about issues with mobile devices and the potential for patient privacy issues.  The post discusses an incident where hospital employees took pictures of a shark attack victim in the emergency room and emailed them to other people.

Bob goes on to express concern that mobile devices with cameras and social media increase the potential for patient privacy issues.

As such, this incident provides a good example for training and reeducating health care employees on patient privacy issues. Health care employees and professionals must always remember to start from a framework of protecting the health and privacy of their patients. As the use of mobile devices with cameras and social media tools becomes more ingrained in our every day lives — the ability for private information to be captured, transferred and spread in a viral fashion has become much easier. Caution must be used and this case highlights the importance of retraining staff and highlighting the importance of protecting your patient’s privacy.

Hospitals and medical practices have to add cameras, facebook updates, tweets, and other social media to the list of items to address when providing HIPAA privacy education.