Friday, February 6, 2009

Why Participating in Blogs is Important

I had the privilege of meeting e-PatientDave at the TEPR conference this week. He was there to bring the patient's views to this conference - wow - that's a novel thought! Getting patient input at a conference on healthcare......this does not happen often enough. It was a commanding performance and one that should have been videoed and then youtubed but I think he has this in the plan based on what I read.

He has his own blog(s) e-PatientDave and is of course on twitter and is an advocate for the inclusion on the patient in the care process (whew - two eureka moments in a single post!). He made many compelling points, delivered an emotional and riveting diary of his incidental finding of an especially aggressive form of Renal Cell Carcinoma that he fought and won. He joined an impromptu tweetup at the evening reception and continued to engage throughout the conference. Much of what he does is on his own coin and time and done with the attitude that given the history every second is a bonus.

A post from last month on why he loves participating in blogs and healthcare is descriptive and a great study of the relevance of this media to our future.....if you are not involved in this media the world is going to pass you by. This post linked to Paul Levy's "Running a Hospital blog that is definitely leading the crowd in communication and openness. He had cited the news of the day on "Check Lists" - I talked about this last year in this post - Simple things save lives crediting Peter Pronovost and congratulating him on his recognition as a newly inducted fellowship. There was a great article in the New Yorker titled "The Checklist" that detailed the concepts and the amazing results

Social media power. Connecting and engaging everyone. If you aren't on board you should be. Do you agree or is this just more "stuff" to distract us form delivering care - you tell me.

There are so many ways to participate and here are some of mine (it's horses for courses - pick the media you like):

Twitter
Technorati
RSS Feed - Speech Understanding
RSS Feed - Navigating Healthcare
Linked-In
Plaxo
Facebook
Digg
del.icio.us
Follow me on Twitter
DM Reply on the Twitter

2 comments:

e-Patient Dave said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
e-Patient Dave said...

Correcting my previous incomplete comment, which I deleted :)...

Nick, it was terrific to meet you. You're my hero – a doc who completely gets it about how Internet technology can transform healthcare, making life better for everyone: docs, patients, hospitals, insurance companies, vendors, the whole lot.

On some days I think of the 4,000 people a day who get told "You've got cancer." On other days I think of the ones who haven't yet heard that, and will. And on other days, the most moving ones, I think of the parents who live with - or are about to live with - the news that their baby has a serious disease. For all of these, I'm dedicating my energies to improving how well fallible humans can deliver the care they set out to deliver, to produce more favorable outcomes.

We're building a new world. Thanks for being one of the pioneers.

Member

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