Review of presentation platforms

Slideshare and much more reviewed here.

Who are the most influential ER docs on Twitter?

Find out here.

We must be careful. Social media, where power and influence often surpass truth, may be contributing to the post-modernization of medicine.

Top social media posts on derm emergencies

Reported here.

Khan Academy Anatomy and Physiology

Lots of free basic science videos.

Khan Academy Medicine

I was not aware of this resource. Should be worth exploring.

Can the impact and educational value of medical social media be measured?

Here is one proposal.

Directory of FOAM and related sites

Here.

Update on social media as medical education tools

This is a nice compilation of medical education social media resources. Coming from an emergency medicine journal it is biased toward that field but, after all, emergency medicine is where it's mostly happening right now.  

Social media influence on journal readership

Findings from a new study in Circulation:

Methods and Results—Articles were randomized to receive targeted social media exposure from Circulation, including postings on the journal's Facebook and Twitter feeds. The primary end-point was 30-day article page views. We conducted an intention-to-treat analysis comparing article page views by the Wilcoxon Rank sum test between papers randomized to social media as compared to those in the control group, which received no social media from Circulation. Pre-specified subgroups included article type (population/clinical/basic), US vs. non-US corresponding author, and whether the manuscript received an editorial. Overall, 243 manuscripts were randomized: 121 in the social media arm and 122 in the control arm. There was no difference in median 30-day page views (409 [social media] vs 392 [control], p=0.80)...

Conclusion—A social media strategy for a cardiovascular journal did not increase the number of times an article was viewed. Further research is necessary to understand the ways in which social media can increase the impact of published cardiovascular research.

The major weakness in this study is that it looked only at the effect of Circulation's own social media outlets, not the effect of medical social media in general. The social media influence may be more than this study indicates although other studies suggest that it remains low despite the growing enthusiasm for FOAM and similar initiatives.

More from Cardiobrief and the Mayo Social Media Health Network.

Facebook “likes” and hospital mortality rates

Findings in a recent study:

With the growth of Facebook, public health researchers are exploring the platform's uses in health care. However, little research has examined the relationship between Facebook and traditional hospital quality measures. The authors conducted an exploratory quantitative analysis of hospitals' Facebook pages to assess whether Facebook "Likes" were associated with hospital quality and patient satisfaction. The 30-day mortality rates and patient recommendation rates were used to quantify hospital quality and patient satisfaction; these variables were correlated with Facebook data for 40 hospitals near New York, NY. The results showed that Facebook "Likes" have a strong negative association with 30-day mortality rates and are positively associated with patient recommendation. These exploratory findings suggest that the number of Facebook "Likes" for a hospital may serve as an indicator of hospital quality and patient satisfaction. These findings have implications for researchers and hospitals looking for a quick and widely available measure of these traditional indicators.

Via Hospital Medicine Virtual Journal Club.

Use of on line resources by medical professionals

This article focuses on social media and has tutorial videos for Twitter and RSS readers. Almost all of these resources are free. Users can be overwhelmed because, like primary journal articles, they are now proliferating exponentially. As far as I can tell emergency medicine physicians are the leaders in the promotion and adoption of this technology. Despite that, recognition by academic medicine remains poor overall.

There is a lot of discussion on how to organize and vet these resources but nothing is settled. This is nothing new. In my nine years in the blogosphere I have seen many such efforts come and go. Nothing will ever be settled except for this: caveat emptor. Ultimate responsibility lies with the user. It's a jungle, but so too with books and journals.

Via Clinical Cases and Images.

Competing views on Twitter for scientific topics

An interesting discussion was linked at Clinical Cases and Images. I can see both sides. For me it is a great repository of links to direct readers to primary sources. But I was particularly interested in this comment:

Twitter is ill-suited for nuanced, in-depth scientific discussions. The tweets are only 140-characters after all, and it is difficult to follow a conversation because every single tweet is a separate web page. Tweet materials that appeal to a general audience, rather than complex scientific papers.

Should scientific discussions ever be anything but nuanced and in-depth? I am a little concerned that Twitter is extending the sound bite culture of the TV watching general audiences into the professional arena. Not so good in my view.

Blog hiatus

Yes things have been quiet around here for the past week. During the time off from posting I've been working on a few tweaks to make the site more useful as a clinical and educational resource. The labor of love continues and posting is about to resume apace.

Reflections on blogging

I missed my 8th blogiversary a few months ago. In fact I slept right through it. But recently in a reflective and expansive moment I dug from the archives an old pod cast interview from back when I started this blog. In it Kent Bottles asked me questions about why I blog and what I get out of it. I listened to it for the first time in years and was surprised to learn how little my attitudes have changed. So it's time to reflect. Here are my current ideas on blogging. Save for some nuance here and there they're pretty much the same as when I started:

1) I maintain a clinical focus. In 2005 there were a few hundred medical blogs but most were personal diaries or soapboxes. Very few featured hard core clinical topics. I found I had a niche. Not many other bloggers were doing what I planned to do. Since that time the number and quality of clinically focused blogs has increased (this seems mainly to have come from nephrology and emergency medicine) but I find there's still plenty of room for what I do.

2) Many of the so called clinical blogs back then were little more than news aggregators. I knew then as I do now that very little meaningful learning comes in the form of breaking news. Medical progress plods along incrementally. It builds on what was known before and needs to be explained in terms of what was known before. And now we have Twitter. How can you microblog complex medical issues with the nuance they need? I'll dump in a link post now and again but for the most part I try to provide perspective.

3) Beyond the fact that I was doing this in large part for myself I started out with clear objectives about my audience. I would direct my posts to health care workers, mainly physicians and physicians in training. Satisfying the learning needs of two vastly different audiences at the same time, clinicians and consumers, is extremely difficult and I know of only rare instances when it has been done effectively. Nevertheless many bloggers seem to be trying. Either that or they haven't bothered to address how they want to define their audiences. I believe it's best to define my audience even if I pay a price in traffic.

4) Finally, blogging helps me. It motivates me to read and maintain an edge in the content area of my work in hospital medicine. I have a long list of journals and other sources I scan regularly. When I run across an item of professional interest I blog it. This has produced an organized set of on line bookmarks I can access anywhere, anytime, when I'm looking for this or that article either for personal reference or to share with a colleague.

Physician use of social media

Guidelines from the ACP. It's really just good common sense.  

Is the state medical board watching your on line behavior?

A recent paper reports a survey of state medical boards as to how they would respond to hypothetical scenarios:

 High consensus was defined as more than 75% of respondents indicating that investigation was “likely” or “very likely,” moderate consensus as 50% to 75% indicating this, and low consensus as fewer than 50% indicating this.

Four online vignettes demonstrated high consensus: Citing misleading information about clinical outcomes (81%; 39/48), using patient images without consent (79%; 38/48), misrepresenting credentials (77%; 37/48), and inappropriately contacting patients (77%; 37/48). Three demonstrated moderate consensus for investigation: depicting alcohol intoxication (73%; 35/48), violating patient confidentiality (65%; 31/48), and using discriminatory speech (60%; 29/48). Three demonstrated low consensus: using derogatory speech toward patients (46%; 22/48), showing alcohol use without intoxication (40%; 19/48), and providing clinical narratives without violation of confidentiality (16%; 7/48).

RW's Tweets

OK, so I've stepped into the 21st century and am finally tweeting.  But I need some followers.

Dr. Smith talks about his ECG blog

With the passage of the old generation of electrocardiography masters (Marriott, Hurst) a new generation of ECG masters is arising and it comes from the ranks of emergency medicine. The driving force behind this is the fact that early “STEMI” recognition, both in the ED and in “the field,” is a performance measure. No one wants to miss one and no one wants egg on their face for calling a STEMI false alarm. Emergency medicine types are motivated more than ever to get it right.

Dr. Smith teaches residents in emergency medicine. His blog is on my list of the best ECG resources on the web.

Via Clinical Cases and Images.

I’m back

This blog is not dead. Priorities of life outside the blogosphere came calling. During the hiatus I realized how important a part of my professional life blogging has been. I have also reevaluated the focus, which will more clinical. An effort to improve the quality of clinical posts may result in a decreased frequency. Expect the new and improved Notes to resume apace in the near future.

Hospital Medicine Virtual Journal Club

From the Wash U Hospital Medicine section.