How Social Media is Changing Patient Care

Your patients tweet from your waiting room. They describes their symptoms on Facebook. They ask about that 'funny rash' on Quora. They looked you up on LinkedIn.

Your patients are engaging in social media --- are you?

Not just personally, but professionally - the expectations have changed. Medicine ultimately is a service industry, and like all service industries, the expectations of our customer, our patients, have changed. They are online and expect us to be as well. The question facing most practices is, to what degree? With practices stretched thin already managing work in the office, how can they devote resources to having an online presence?

These questions do not have simple answers, but like any medical problem you encounter, the first step is to gather more information. Think about your patient population - how active online are they in general? Clearly, there will be a big difference between a pediatrics practice and a geriatrics one. If your patient population is quite broad, another approach is to [drum roll] ask them! Many patients would be happy to let you know where they look for medical information and what ways they find convenient to communicate with your office.

As you have determine what your patients want, you also have to ask yourself how much are you willing to devote. In this day and age, being absent online is no longer an option. At a minimum, you should post basic information about your practice such as the address, telephone number, and office hours. I highly suggest that you have at least a static website that offers this information, and definitely make it accesible on sites that people use to find locations such as Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Yelp.

However, this post is about 'social' media, and static information is not very social. Look into creating  a presence on Facebook and Twitter. You will have to judge whether you want these channels to be more one-way, with patients sending information to you, versus two-way with you or your office actively responding. You also have to judge how 'medical' you want your communications to be, keeping confidentiality and liability issues in mind. Avoid discussing specific medical issues in these forums. However, they function great for communicating general health tips, answering general health questions, and providing specific office information such as hour changes or new medication / treatment options available. Images showing when preventative care should be performed, or basic management algorithms, can be very helpful for patients. If you are particularly intrepid, ask a patient with a 'success' story if you can share their story on your social site. Draw your patients into the conversation with you.

Social media is an unchartered territory for most physicians so don't fear - explore! Learn what kinds of pages and accounts work best on these sites. Try different types of comments and posts. Including engaging content that your patients/fans would want to share with each other. In the social media world, something being 'viral' is a good thing! Help your users catch the bug! Chart your own course in the social media waters. Your patients will benefit and sing your praises - online and off.

Scrub Notes Site Update

This site has experienced benign neglect for longer than I care to recount. There are thousands of excuses, and it is certainly my fault. The reality is that this was no longer the priority for me it once was. However, now, it is time to change the game.

As the saying goes though, the best thing to do if you fall off a horse is to get back on. I will start by going through each old post and editing it for content, broken links, and other problems. Next, I will slowly start adding new content again. If there is anything in particular you would like to see more posts about (or less), please leave a comment or contact us. Cheers!

The Ultrasound—More Than Just a Diagnostic Device

Today's guest post discusses some of the cutting edge work being done using ultrasound. 

Imagine a world where a woman can give herself an ultrasound without leaving the comfort of her own home. To anyone who has ever gotten an ultrasound, this sounds like science fiction. After all, it currently takes anywhere between 2-4 years of sonography school become a fully qualified ultrasound technician. The level of training and technical expertise required to use an ultrasound machine make it difficult to imagine a world where getting a sonogram is as easy as taking your own temperature.

According to Paul Carson, a professor of radiological sciences at the University of Michigan, sonography machines will someday be among the many medical appliances that have made their way from our hospitals into our homes. If the current rate of technological development continues, we could have hospital quality, at-home sonogram technology within the next twenty years.

At-home sonogram technology won’t render ultrasound technicians obsolete any more than at-home thermometers rendered nurses obsolete. That said, the rapid rate at which sonogram technology is advancing could redefine the role that ultrasound technicians are expected to play.  

There are many medical professionals, for example, who believe that ultrasound technology could one day become the foundation for entirely new types of surgery. A team of scientists at the University of Michigan, for example, has recently pioneered a technique they’ve labeled “histotripsy”. 

For those who haven’t heard of it, histortripsy involves using high-intensity ultrasounds to create and break apart microbubbles, which fragments cell-tissues with a high degree of accuracy. Doctors could theoretically use histortripsy to target and destroy damaged cells while leaving healthy cells intact.

Other doctors are experimenting with ultrasound technology to develop more effective methods of drug delivery. One of the experiments that Professor Carson’s team is conducting involves injecting inert liquid droplets into the body, then vaporizing those droplets with targeted ultrasound blasts. 

There are two benefits to this new process. First, an active drug contained within an inert liquid droplet is exposed, but only in the part of the body targeted by the ultrasound. Second, doctors can deliver much higher doses of drugs without having to worry about side-effects that would otherwise be present.

If these experiments are successful, it could expand the medicinal role that ultrasound technicians are expected to play. People would begin to rely on ultrasound technicians for both diagnosis and treatment. The implications of these technological trends are all too obvious—if you’re considering become a ultrasound technician, there’s no better time than now.

Arthur Posey is a retired guidance counselor who now spends his days as a freelance blogger. Given his wealth of experience in the field, Arthur frequently writes about the importance of pairing students with the right trade school. When he's not doing that, Arthur is likely to be found rafting on his favorite rivers or working on his motorcycle.