Earlier this month, I happened upon an actual scientific study of the use of social media in medicine and healthcare conducted by researchers at the University of British Columbia. The study was fraught with terms such as “positivistic epistemologies” and “critical-interpretivist theory” to add the requisite ambiance one finds in such studies. All kidding aside, I did find the study to be a great singular digest for how healthcare is using social. However, while the study provided a good written history on each facet of social media, it did not go as far as to provide advice on the most effective uses of social. This is where I’ll step in.
In this series, I will share some interesting tidbits found within the study for each category. I’ll also highlight recommendations for the correct tactical use of these mediums. We start with:
Blogs
The study defines blogs as “communal websites where opinions on any number of topics are voiced to create communal, collaborative dialogues.” I really love this definition because it relies heavily on the terms “community” and “collaboration.” The general direction of this definition towards the “we” and away from the “me” points us to one of the main mistakes healthcare bloggers tend to make, which we will discuss further below.
As mentioned in the study, these are the most common hospital uses of blogs:
- advertise facilities
- share positive patient experiences
- feature well-known physicians who treat celebrities
- disseminate disease-specific information for patient education
If I had it my way, tactic #1 would largely go away, and 2 and 3 would be used with great precision. Since blogs are about communities and collaboration, there is very little room for those that wish to crow about themselves endlessly. Treating a blog like a media room, where press releases are repurposed for web, is not the way to go. A person or organization should generally not talk about themselves in first person (or third person for that matter). Instead it is about disseminating information that your intended community would find useful. For healthcare organizations, one of my favorite topics is preventative medicine, which highlights all of the small things patients can do to make a big difference in their overall health.
There are only a few instances where healthcare organizations have been “self focused” successfully. This is typically done through sharing positive patient experiences. Yet, again, the organization is not talking about themselves. They are sharing the journey a patient has had through illness or wellness and sharing that with others that may find this information helpful. As a result, I feel that sharing patient experiences is very much in line with disseminating healthcare information to an interested community. Here are two of my favorites:
Henry Ford: Gail’s Video Blog
There have been a few healthcare organizations that have been successful at recruiting patient guest bloggers. Henry Ford’s blog for their Bariatric Center is one of my favorites. On this blog, Gail records her bariatric surgery journey over the course of a few months. Blogs like this are great because there is no sharper lens for viewing the true patient experience than through the eyes of the patients themselves.
Mayo Clinic’s Piano Foyer Video
This one was quite a viral social media accident (as most things that go viral in social media are). An orchestra had performed within the Mayo Clinic atrium, but weren’t scheduled to retrieve the piano until a day or two later. Enter Fran and Marlow Cowan, who were visiting Mayo Clinic as patients from Ohio. There they found this grand piano sitting by its lonesome and decided to do something about it. Jodi Hume, another guest seated in the atrium at the time, found the pair so entertaining that she recorded them and uploaded that video to YouTube.
To date the video has been viewed almost 10 million times, and Mayo Clinic’s name is right there in the title for all to see. Mayo Clinic has since asked the couple to return for a second performance, which can be viewed here:
Any questions on blogging? I’d be happy to answer them in the comments section below.
