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Are Doctors Duty-Bound to Embrace Social Media?
By Stewart Gandolf | March 1, 2010
I came across an intriguing blog post today entitled, “Are Physicians Obligated to Participate in Social Media?”
Now to be honest, my gut reaction was, “Oh great, another run-of-the-mill marketer thinks social media is for EVERYONE. Probably looking to drum up business from doctors. I wonder if he has ever MET any doctors.”
Thankfully I was wrong. This excellent blog post was written by a doctor and author, not a marketer (Bryan Vartabedian, MD), but more importantly contains a truly unique point of view.
But before I reveal Vartabedian’s insight, let’s set the context.
To say that doctors are incredibly busy and skeptical about social media is an understatement. Aside from wanting to spend their limited spend spare time in other ways (perhaps with their families?), they worry about liability risks, becoming too “chummy” with patients, psycho followers and more.
Meanwhile, marketers often become so enamored with social media that it becomes almost a religion for them.
The trouble is, health care social media is a more complex issue than either, “everyone should do it” or “stay away.”
Essentially, Dr. Vartabedian argues that there is a ton of misinformation out there, and doctors should band together to get the truth out via social media.
He cites the public’s fear of a link between vaccinations and autism. Both scientists and doctors argue that this theory has been scientifically discredited time and again, yet a significant portion (25%) of the public remains steadfastly convinced that vaccinations cause autism. Therefore, parents often avoid vaccinations and their kids subsequently wind up getting very real – and preventable – childhood diseases.
In the real world, a few loud voices tend to get all of the attention, even when they are wrong. Scientists of all kinds tend not to be good at promoting, so the voice of reason often becomes lost in a fray of competing (loud and misinformed) voices.
If thousands of doctors were to tweet, blog and post on facebook about medical issues, voices of reason would begin to show up a lot more on Google. Therefore, patients would become better informed and make better choices.
Alas, I don’t see that happening any time soon en masse. There are just too many barriers for most doctors to pick up the social media torch.
Still, change begins with a determined few.
My net takeaway: Aside from a being a good way to grow your reputation, hospital or practice, social media can also be used as a tool to better inform the public, particularly about those issues where good information is either lacking or simply overwhelmed by misinformation.
Topics: Healthcare Marketing, Medical Marketing | 1 Comment »
One Response to “Are Doctors Duty-Bound to Embrace Social Media?”
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March 8th, 2010 at 9:32 pm
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