Over the weekend, I watched a speech by Dr. Mike Evans about using social media to educate patients and caregivers. Dr Evans is an academic family medicine doctor who also runs a media lab. He makes those famous whiteboard presentations, such as 23 and 1/2 hours, which now has more than 4-million views.
His talk got me thinking about health education and what I want to do here on this blog. One of Dr. Evan’s suggestions is to use your professional page on Facebook. Here is the link to my DrJohnM FB page. I use that page to post my blogs and Tweets–and not much else. I underuse it.
Here is an experiment: I am going to use my FB page to post short messages about diseases I treat.
I’ll start with atrial fibrillation and AF ablation. This way, I can keep things short, not encumber those of you who have signed up for a mailer (thanks) with specifics you may not be interested in, and also perhaps accumulate nice lists for summary posts here.
I’ll start with a topic I am asked about often: What to expect after AF ablation.Â
I’ll try to post daily, but don’t hold me to that.
I hope to see you over on Facebook. My first post on AF ablation is up. I started with 2 things to expect after AF ablation. There are many more to list.
Here is the link again: Dr John M on Facebook.
JMM
P.S. I’m also thinking about improving my video skills. See, middle-aged masters bike racers can learn knew things.
5 replies on “Changing the use of DrJohnM Facebook page for disease education”
Hello Dr. John,
I’m not quite sure if your new Facebook target readership is other physicians or patients, but I’m thinking that if only more MDs took your lead and used Facebook as a useful portal specifically for clear answers to the questions patients ask, we’d all see better-informed patients.
If you do decide to focus on the patient reader, you could make things even more helpful by using prominent, pithy titles for your new education posts (for example: “Two Things To Expect After AF Ablation” is far clearer than starting with: “This series of posts will concern itself with atrial fibrillation ablation….”
Personally, selfishly, I’m hoping for a patient focus for your new Facebook project (your blog and other professional writing already speak well to your peers). Meanwhile, good luck with those video lessons. (But when will you ever have time for biking!?)
regards,
CT
Thanks CT…Good suggestion. I changed the title of my FB post today. My idea to build lists and posts through updates on FB is that I now have a decent number of people who receive my posts as email or in a Feedly account. So I want my posts to be worthy of a read, not just an update about a medical fact–that may or may not pertain to them. When this list of things to expect gets to the 10 or 15, I’ll edit it down and publish in a more final form on the blog.
Before I had cryoablation, my doctor sent me a pdf telling what to expect. One of the things the document said was that my heart would hurt afterwards; and it did. Knowing this in advance made the pain not frightening. I expected it. If surgeons would just TELL people in advance what to expect, life after surgery would be better. Surgeons need to be forthcoming.
Enjoy your posts. The problem I find with Facebook is that it is very hard to find previous posts on specific topics. A user coming there a month from now will have no idea what discussions have occurred in the past and how to find them. With a blog there are links and a search box which can be used to find things that you have presented in the past.
That said, I feel a website does an even better job. I’ve done all three: website, blog and Facebook for my own interests. There is no doubt that Facebook is the easiest for you to post and a website is the most difficult. A blog is a good compromise between the options. IMO
Don
Agree. I am building the list over on the FB page. When it’s complete, I will publish a more polished Ten things to expect…post here. I’ve already thought about another list to build on FB and then post: Ten things to do while you wait to see the specialist.
The other thing I’ve done with the FB page is collate my Tweets, and add an occasional picture. I’m using FB as more of a short-form publishing site. Twitter is sort of good for that, but you don’t want to overflow your feed. I unfollow people who Tweet to much.