FEATURE
promoted anti-vaccination sentiments. 3
Moreover, 45 percent of consumers claim
information on social media would affect
the likelihood that they’d seek second
opinions, while 40 percent said it would
influence the way they manage chronic
conditions or diet and exercise. 4
The documented power of social
media was one of the factors that drove
Dr. Yates to join Twitter. “I felt the re-
sponsibility to provide information to my
patients and to patients around the world,”
she told ASH Clinical News. “We need to
provide patient education in the forums
where patients are talking to each other.
If we’re not willing to go into these spaces
where our patients are talking about these
issues, then it’s partly our fault that there
is such bad information out there.”
She acknowledged, though, that it
can be an uphill battle. Her strategy is
to “overwhelm the system with good
information,” by sharing new research or
linking to patient resources from advo-
cacy organizations. “As physicians, we
have the potential to change what shows
up first when patients are searching for
information [about their conditions],” Dr.
Yates said.
A New Type of Networking
Through Facebook groups and hashtags,
patients have formed groups to seek
advice and support from other people
living with the same condition. For social
media–savvy doctors, it also is an op-
portunity to learn more about how their
patients experience the diseases they treat.
Jerad Gardner, MD (@JMGardnerMD),
from the University of Arkansas for
Medical Sciences and chair of Social Media
Subcommittees for the United States and
Canadian Academy of Pathology, told
ASH Clinical News that, in his experience,
patients often appreciate having a doctor’s
perspective in these groups.
The first Facebook group Dr. Gardner
joined was for people diagnosed with a
tumor called dermatofibrosarcoma pro-
tuberans. When he answered a question a
group member posted, he also acknowl-
edged that he “wasn’t sure if [he] should
be in the group, since [he] is not a patient.”
His concerns were allayed when the group’s
founder responded gratefully, telling him
that, in the six years of the group’s existence,
he was the only medical professional to join
and offer information or ask patients about
living with the disease.
“That blew me away,” Dr. Gardner
said. “I realized that [engaging with
patients through] social media is a way
that we can help people – especially those
with rare diseases – feel more empowered
about their disease. Many doctors still
don’t even know that these groups are
out there, which is kind of sad, because I
think it is a way for us to help patients, as
well as a huge resource for us.”
He has expanded his social media
reach to about 17,000 followers on Twit-
ASHClinicalNews.org
ter by joining groups formed around the
diseases he studies. In his spare time, he’ll
respond to questions users have posted in
the forums. However, he recommended
that clinicians set careful boundaries and
manage expectations about how much help
they can offer. General questions are OK,
he said, but doctors need to be clear that
they cannot offer medical advice without
actually seeing a patient. Instead, these in-
teractions should help patients have more
informed, empowered discussions with
their personal doctors.
When using Facebook, Ruben Mesa,
MD (@mpdrc), a panelist at the session and
director of the UT Health San Antonio MD
Anderson Cancer Center, also urged practi-
tioners to join these types of groups – rather
than creating new ones – for another reason.
“It’s always important that these groups are
created and stewarded by patients them-
selves so that there is no perceived conflict
of interest that we are creating something
just for our professional benefit.”
Leveraging Social Media
Patients in these groups derive benefit
from sharing their experiences with each
other, but their reach can extend beyond
closed Facebook groups, according to Dr.
Mesa, because these groups are “natural
reservoirs” for patients who may be inter-
ested in participating in clinical trials.
“Rather than waiting for [potential
study participants] to show up to my
clinic,” he said, “I can put the word out
there.” That includes sharing patient re-
cruitment materials and information about
a trial in “patient-friendly” terms. Sharing
videos about the trial, its purpose, and how
it works through social media “makes it
much more ‘real’ for people and is more
powerful than [showing patients] a website
with enrollment criteria,” he said.
He referenced a recent study in which
his center participated that evaluated
the benefits of online yoga for symptom
management for patients with myelopro-
liferative neoplasms. 5 Within one week of
posting the opportunity on social media
channels, more than 400 people tried to
register for the interventional, Institutional
Review Board–approved study.
Clinical trial accrual is incredibly
important, he said. “It helps [researchers’]
careers, it helps the center, and it helps to
meet the goals of those studies to identify
whether a drug is active.” Leveraging
social media for research makes sense, he
continued, especially for communities of
people with rare diseases.
Digital Scholarship
Doctors also form their own groups on
social media, for professional and personal
support and to discuss the unique experi-
ences of being a practitioner. “We’re seeing
more and more activity in closed groups,”
Teresa Chan, MD (@TChanMD), an
assistant professor in emergency medicine
at McMaster University who also spoke at
the ASH annual meeting session, told ASH
Clinical News.
For example, Dr. Chan is a member of
the “Physician Moms” group, which has
tens of thousands of members. As one user
wrote, the group is “a main source of sup-
port for being a doctor and mother,” while
another praised the group for sharing con-
tinuing medical education opportunities.
“Social media is revolutionizing
the way we are educating and reaching
people,” Dr. Chan noted. During her talk
at the ASH annual meeting, she discussed
“digital scholarship,” and the growing use
of social media in medical education.
“For a long time, independent practice
was seen as a solo enterprise, [but now]
we see physicians wanting to engage with
the world and talk about the exploding
amount of research,” she explained.
“[Social media]
allows doctors
to meet patients
where they are.
... We need to
provide patient
education in the
forums where
patients are
talking to each
other.”
—AMBER YATES, MD
Researchers, clinicians, and investiga-
tors use Twitter hashtags to discuss new
research in their fields of interest or to
live-tweet scientific meetings to a global au-
dience. With this type of curation, conver-
sations can continue long after the meeting
has ended. (Alternatively, introductions on
Twitter can turn into real-life meetings that
may never have happened due to schedu-
ling conflicts or geographic constraints.
Search any meeting hashtag and you’re sure
to also see photos tagged with #TweetUp
(or “a meetup for Tweeters”) or #mottirl (or
“Met on Twitter Then in Real Life”).
“Just as the basic scientists are doing
really cool discovery work, so too can we
advance the cause in linking people to that
knowledge,” Dr. Chan said. “As medical
educators, we need more people who are
interested in advocating and sharing their
knowledge online.” She urged attendees to
engage with digital scholarship, building
their academic portfolios and amplify-
ing their message by sharing workshops
and lectures on sites like MedEdPORTAL,
an open-access clearinghouse of peer-
reviewed teaching and learning resources
published by the Association of American
Medical Colleges.
The proliferation of health-care related
blogs, podcasts, and online communities
sends a clear message that doctors have
carved out a space for themselves in the so-
cial media landscape, and now is the time
to start critically appraising that material,
Dr. Chan said. Several tools have emerged
in recent years designed to evaluate how
doctors are using nontraditional online
education resources (like social media
groups, podcasts, and journal clubs) – and
how successful they are.
As part of the METRIQ podcast study,
for example, Dr. Chan and other medical
educators developed a quality-assessment
tool to help trainees evaluate these types
of resources. 6 In another project, they
evaluated the reliability and validity of the
Academic Life in Emergency Medicine’s
Approved Instructional Resources score,
finding that the five-question tool gave
medical educators an easy way to critically
appraise online content. 7
Through this research, Dr. Chan and
colleagues developed general criteria for
evaluating nontraditional educational
material: “It must be original, advance the
field by building, be archived, and include
a method for the community to share
transparent feedback.”
Point-of-Care Apps
While social media offers broad access
to communities of patients, caregivers,
and colleagues to help doctors facilitate
discussions, many doctors have also begun
using applications built for more special-
ized purposes. According to a 2014 report,
doctors spend an average of three hours
each week watching continuing medical
education videos, and 85 percent reported
using their phones at least once a day for
clinical purposes. 8
The same study showed that 38 percent
of the time that doctors spent on their
smartphones was using professional apps,
such as the physicians-only site Doxim-
ity. However, in her experience, Dr. Chan
said, when doctors reach for their mobile
devices in the clinic, “it’s usually to look at
quick reference guides, or information that
they can use to teach patients or trainees.”
A scan of the iTunes Store charts bears
this out: The most popular point-of-care
apps are reference apps, like the ASH
Pocket Guides on specific diseases. Dr.
Yates, who also works in emergency medi-
cine, said these types of apps are helpful
because she doesn’t always know which
patients will be in the clinic each day. “If I
see a patient with von Willebrand disease
– which is not my specialty – I will pull up
the ASH Pocket Guide for von Willebrand
disease on my phone,” she explained.
Dr. Yates found one of her other favorite
ASH Clinical News
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