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Tips For Physicians Who Want To Get Involved In Social Media

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My old friend and mentor, Ves Dimov, MD at Clinical Cases and Images shared some great instructions about how to start using social media as medical professionals.

– Start on Twitter, expand to a blog as natural progression.

– Input your blog posts automatically to a Facebook like/fan page.

– Listen to the leading physicians, nurses and patients’ voices on Twitter, and reply.

– Comment on blogs.

– Do not be afraid to share your expertise.

– Comply with HIPAA and common sense.

Also here is what Ves thinks about using Twitter.

I have published a series of similar entries on my Medicine 2.0 page.

*This blog post was originally published at ScienceRoll*

Why Aren’t There More Women CEOs In Health IT?

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The Health Tech 2011 Conference, held earlier this month in Boston, featured presentations from startup CEOs in the health and wellness space. The conference had nothing to do with gender issues or leadership per se. Yet the Twitter feed from the conference (#ciht11) contained this:

@ml_barnett By my count, only 3 of 27 speakers are women. RT @taracousphd: where are the female entrepreneurs? It’s healthcare!!!

taracousphd and @ml_barnett reminded us of a painful fact. There aren’t many female CEOs in Health IT. Why is this?

wecandoit 115x150 Where are the Women CEOs in Health IT?Women certainly aren’t short on content knowledge in health care. In fact, they dominate men in this area. More than 40% of all practicing physicians and 50% of all medical school graduates are women. Women earn nearly 3 times more PhDs in psychology (useful content knowledge for startups in the space covered by Health Tech 2011). Nearly 94% of nurses and 74% of physical therapists are women, and they rule the workforce in public health, social services and pharmacy  as well.

The problem–and it’s a big one–has to do with the ‘IT’ part of ‘Health IT.’ In 2008, only 6% of Fortune 500 technology companies had female CEOs and 13% had women corporate officers of any kind, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology. Among tech startups that raised venture capital in 2009, only 4.3% were led by female chief executives. A recent Business Week list of the ‘best young entrepreneurs in tech’ included 45 people, only 3 of which were women.

Among the many explanations for the gender disparity among chief executives in IT, the 4 that make the most sense to me are these: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Pizaazz*

Medical Students: Why Choose Psychiatry?

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Here at Shrink Rap, we often talk about the stigma of having a psychiatric disorder. It’s funny, but society has it almost ranked, so that certain illnesses are very stigmatized–schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, and borderline personality disorder, to name a few, and others are pretty much socially acceptable: Attention Deficit Disorder, for example, especially among the high school/college crowd where the patient often gets identified (or self-identifies) as the source for those late-night stimulants that so many kids cop.

It’s not just the patients. Psychiatrists are also stigmatized, and that doesn’t help much when our society talks about the shrink shortage.

Exalya writes:

I’m a first (almost second) year medical student with a strong passion for psychiatry. I love listening to your podcasts; you give me hope for my future when the drudgery of first year classes is getting me down, and I feel like I always learn something useful.

That aside, I am writing to you seeking some advice. Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at Shrink Rap*

Does Your Doctor Have Time To Think About You?

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At the New York Times’ City Room Blog, Joel Cohen writes:

my wife and I are convinced that all medical students should have to pass Overbooking 101 before they can become doctors.Again and again, we arrive at a doctor’s aptly named waiting room on or before the scheduled time, only to learn that three or four others sitting there have been given the same appointment.

He says doctors need to understand the impact of this on their patients.  I agree, but not just because it’s annoying.

A typical doctor sees thirty patients a day.  Some see even more.

Reflect on that math.  If your doctor sees 30 patients a day, that’s 150 a week, 600 a month, maybe 7,000 a year.

It means that if it’s been even two months since you last saw your doctor, he has probably seen more than a thousand people since your last visit.  It’s why there’s often that Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at See First Blog*

Why Health Care Costs So Much: Is The Public Partially To Blame?

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It is my job at EverythingHealth to steer the reader to great information.  For this reason I am providing you with a Link to The New England Journal of Medicine article titled “The $650 Billion Dollar question – why does cost effective care diffuse so slowly?”  I have retitled it “Why Health Care Costs So Much”.

The United States spends much more on health care than other industrialized nations with no improvement in outcomes or health status of it’s citizens.  If we enacted some of the policies that other nations use, we would have $650 Billion to spend on education, infrastructure, social security and other societal needs.  Why can’t we get there?

Read here to understand the barriers.  It isn’t simple.  Resistance to change and instituting cost effective care has many stakeholders including legislators, doctors, hospitals, drug and equipment manufacturers, academic training centers, insurance companies and even the media.  We, the public, are also to blame for not understanding that reform which lowers costs would benefit all of us.  There is no free lunch.  When the cost of care goes up for employers, that keeps our wages stagnant.  When millions are uninsured, the cost of their care is born by everyone and it is inefficient care.

The article authors tell us: Read more »

*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*

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