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Do Doctors Feel That They Need Permission To Share Ideas?

Let’s say you’re a doctor and you have an idea, opinion, or a new way of doing things.  What do you do with it?

It used to be that the only place we could share ideas was in a medical journal or from the podium of a national meeting.  Both require that your idea pass through someone’s filter.  As physicians we’ve been raised to seek approval before approaching the microphone.

This is unfortunate.  When I think about the doctors around me, I think about the remarkable mindshare that exists.  Each is unique in the way they think.  Each sees disease and the human condition differently.  But for many their brilliance and wisdom is stored away deep inside.  They are human silos of unique experience and perspective.  They are of a generation when someone else decided if their ideas were worthy of discussion.  They are of a generation when it was understood that few ideas are worthy of discussion.  They are the medical generation of information isolation.

I spoke with a couple of students recently about Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

Should Hospitals Manage Their Physicians’ Online Reputations?

I spoke to a group of academic physicians recently.  Afterward I was and asked, “Shouldn’t my hospital be responsible for my digital footprint?  I don’t have time to look after that sort of thing.  And wouldn’t it make sense for them to promote my research?”

4 thoughts:

1.  Online reputation management of academic physicians should be an individual, not institutional, responsibility. The question reflects a belief that your reputation is the job of “the marketing people.”  No institution will ever be as invested in your future as you are.  While there are hospitals that do a good job supporting their faculty and staff, you can’t assume it to be the case.  No one looks after you like you.

2.  Dig your well before you’re thirsty. That’s the name of a brilliant pre-digital book written by Harvey Mackey.  He suggested that the time to invest in relationships is before you need them.  Medicine is changing fast and you’ll never know how long you’ll be where you’re at.  Better yet, you never know what opportunities could come your way when people find you.  And if you want to experience the land before time when people used colored pencils, Rolodexes, and rotary phones, read Dig Your Well. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

How To Make Meaningful Use Of Social Media

I know this woman – a physician.  She spends a lot of time on Twitter.  She has a Tumblr presence but it’s sparse and not very memorable.  All day long she polishes her Twitter presence.  She’s everyone’s friend.  And to her credit she’s a wonderful curator.  We caught up recently and she wanted to know how she could bring herself to the next level.  Despite her time and investment in the latest real-time social tools she felt that her ideas didn’t get the traction that they deserved.

Here’s what I suggested:  Twitter works for interaction and dissemination.  But ultimately you have to create the stuff that defines you.  Retrievable text, video and audio is where your ideas will live.

It’s about content, not Klout.  You can share and engage, but it’s what you make that lasts.

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

Broaching The End Of Life Topic With Loved Ones: Join The Campaign

This is my 3rd year participating in The Engage with Grace Blog Rally.  Engage With Grace is a movement designed to help advance the conversation about the end-of-life experience.  It began with a simple idea:  Create a tool to get people talking.  Their tool is a slide with five questions designed to initiate dialog about our end-of-life preferences.  I originally heard about Engage with Grace from Paul Levy and he’s at it again this year.

This campaign has forced me to Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

Fast Moving Technology: Is The Pager Completely Extinct?

It’s funny what we remember.  As a 3rd year medical student rotating in surgery I remember quite clearly sitting in my attending’s office at Worcester Memorial Hospital.  He was a vascular surgeon.  I don’t remember his name.  On this particular day I had followed him to his office after rounds.  He had just received his new pager and placed a call to whomever had sent him the device.

It seemed there was a problem.  The device lacked the latest pager feature: vibration.  His current pager only beeped.  The dialog centered around his on-call demands as a vascular surgeon and his love for the symphony.  With a buzzing pager he Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

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How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

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Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

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The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

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Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

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