Should the medical community recognize the social media work of healthcare professionals?

A surgeon blogger  raised an interesting question about social media and academe in his blog Skeptical Scalpel.

The author compared his blog post‘s page views to the number of people who read his published scientific articles – peer-reviewed papers, case reports, review articles, book chapters, editorials, and letters to journal editors on a peer reviewed journal.  The 13, 400 pageviews his blog post generated “far exceeded the views his peer reviewed scientific articles” garnered!  The metrics he used maybe a bit crude but you can’t just disregard those numbers.

This multi authored site Healthxph.net began eight months ago, published some 50 posts, had a total of 6K plus views as of today. HealthXPh health care related topics are broadcast and discussed over twitter via a healthcare tweetchat #healthxph. At one point, a healthxph tweetchat generated  some 9 million plus impressions spread  globally. Crude as it may seem, but that tweet chat impressions most probably far exceeded too the “page views” of all the published scientific articles of this site authors combined!

We want the fastest way to share new medical information into the scientific community and jump start discussion. Or maybe refute it. The broader, general audience will most likely benefit if new healthcare information is readily available and accessible to them. That was exactly what we wanted for paper based journals a century ago. Peer reviewed online publications had the same goal with its launch twenty something years ago.Today, social media is poised to that too. We just need more healthcare professionals to run healthcare social media.

Most of us acknowledge the value of social media to learning. It’s role beginning to take shape in the academe. Healthcare systems use social media to deliver vital medical information to the scientific community. The rapid spread of information on social media makes new medical information available to the general public, fast and easily accessible.

We recognize social media’s value to healthcare  yet , we seem reluctant to accept the fact we need healthcare professionals to “run” healthcare social media.

Join us his Saturday October 11, 2014 at 9PM Manila time as we discuss the following issues

• T1. Should the medical community recognize social media works of healthcare professionals? Why or why not?
• T2. How should the healthcare system quantify social media work by healthcare professionals?
• T3. How should the medical community peer review social media work of healthcare professionals? Why or why not?