Clinicians, social media, and medical conferences, oh my!
October 17, 2014
By: Drs. Chris Carroll and Deep Ramachandran
Join us for a #pulmCC Twitter chat at CHEST 2014! Whether you’re in Austin, Dublin, or Dubai, we hope you’ll join us for a lively discussion on clinician use of social media at medical conferences. Our chat will be held from 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm CT on Monday, October 27. If you are attending CHEST 2014, please join us in person! Details on meeting location are at the end of this post.
Recently I heard a story about a physician who while giving a lecture was upset at how many people, particularly young people, were on their phones during his talk. Naturally he assumed that they were texting their friends about how boring his lecture was. After his lecture, however, he learned that the real story was quite different. The students were actually broadcasting interesting learning points from his lecture to colleagues at other venues.
The use of social media at medical conferences (particularly Twitter) is climbing. Social media tools have proven to be useful for learning, educating, and networking at medical conferences. Applications like Twitter have become increasingly essential tools while traditional three-ring binders have become a thing of the past.
At CHEST, we have encouraged attendees to learn more about social media and its uses. And we think it’s time to use social media to ask the question, “what is the best way to use social media at a medical conference?” And what better place to ask this question than at a medical conference?
To that end, we’re embarking on a CHEST first. Not only will we be gathering our tweeters in one place, we will also be conducting the first-ever, live Twitter chat from a CHEST annual meeting.
At this tweet-up, we will get a chance to meet our fellow social media users as well as have a discussion about uses of social media at medical conferences. The topics for this Twitter chat are:
T1: How does social media enhance your experience at medical conferences?
How do you use Twitter at conferences? What benefits do you get out of it that you would not have otherwise received? Why would you encourage others to use social media while at a conference?
T2: Should organizers adopt social media rules for conferences?
Should rules/policies be developed for social media use at conferences? Should there be “moderators” to deal with troublemakers? How can conference organizers improve social media experience at conferences?
T3: What are important etiquette guidelines (rules of the road) for social media use at medical conferences?
What are important “do’s and dont’s” for using social media at a medical conference? Have you seen examples of these?
T4: What is on the horizon for health-care social media (not just Twitter)? Where will its biggest impact be in 5 years?
T5: Given the quickly-evolving Ebola situation, how can clinicians use social media to help drive the conversation around the topic?
Lastly, we really enjoy your participation in our online Twitter chats and would love to meet you in person! We’ll gather in room 7, level 3, in the Austin Convention Center at 6:00 pm on Monday, October 27, for networking and then jump into a Twitter chat on the topic of clinicians and social media use from 6:30 to 7:30 pm. If you’re not able to attend in person, join us online and be a part of our first-ever medical conference Twitter chat live from CHEST!