Social Media, Fear and
Self Interest and the Khumbaya effect
I am still at that stage in my career where an opportunity to be a conference delegate very exciting. When Darlene Cox our Executive Director let me know about this conference I was pretty pumped. Part of my role along with Darlene and Khalia Lee is to manage our online social media presence, one that is steadily growing. As a fervent science communicator, and someone who just digs humanity and social change generally, I thing social media can do some spectacular things. This conference seemed like the perfect place to discuss how social media can level the playing field and give health consumers a space and the right to shape their health services and be heard. We cannot be ignored, because we are vocal, things go viral quickly and we are demanding for health services to participate in social media, this is our turf, this is not the old paternalistic model of health care, this is about us, our needs, our goals, our social media, we are inviting them to engage and they must respond.
The conference was run
by the Mayo Clinic a not-for-profit US service provider that is
considered to be leading in using technology, the internet and social media to
provide patient centred care. It was run with The Australian Private Hospital
Association, which to be honest I had never heard of, but purports to advocate
for the needs of private hospital providers. We were a small delegation of
around 160 with around 6 of us there as consumers. It was chaired by Norman
Swan who increasing frustrates me in the antagonistic way he probes willing speakers
to engage, dominates time we audience members tries to ask questions and then
haggles those who ask questions. But he was well loved by attendees so perhaps
I am overreacting.
A highlight for me was definitely Wendy Sue @seattlemamadoc who had
obviously read many books on how to give the perfect ted talk. She spoke eloquently
about how social media continues to change how medicine is practice, changing
the power dynamic and the importance of consumers in the centre. Stating that
social media is a tool that allows consumers to have a louder voice in the
health care system, soon she said doctors will have to invited into a consumers
health care team not the other way around. Social media is another way that
consumers can look to determine quality and credibility of a health care
service. This allows personalised medicine rather than paternalistic medicine,
where we tell the services was questions we want answered, and how to work with
us to meet our needs and provide care.
Another interesting session was about making sure that accurate health
information is curated in social media. For example the anti vaccination
movement get a lot of their power from social media so how can clinicians
engage in this space to make sure accurate public health messages are being
spread? They talked about a twitter storm where for 10 minutes a group of
clinicians would work to flood social media with accurate information about
immunisation. It seems that this could be a really power advocacy tool for the
consumer movement too, we could do a twitter storm on person centred care, or
quality and safety. What do you think?
Another theme of the conference
is how do we create safe online communities? Because we know that people use
social media is support groups, for example the endometriosis closed group here
in the ACT.
I Reflected lots on social media
and stories - one session we talked
about how our brains are hard wired to think in stories. So what is your SoMe
story? My reflection is that consumer
stories are crucial to creating systemic change in the health system.
Bupa is everywhere. This is my other reflection. Every event I have
attended this year Bupa is there. Certainly something for us as consumers to
key an eye on.
Another question I had was how do you use comments on Facebook pages
from consumers for quality and safety improvement in your hospitals and use
some to include consumers in systemic change of the health system?
My biggest reflection
on the conference as a whole was on the tension on wanting to use SoMe to get
closer to patients and consumers and listen well and the fear that reputation
and discussion is not controlled by medical fraternity. Is it about providing evidence based care, and
controlling dangerous medical misinformation, or fear of loss of personal
reputation and fear of the power shift towards the consumer being at the centre
and in control of care?
I hate the premise
that everyone is controlled by fear and self-interest but that certainly seems
to be why people come to the table but I want to know how can we harness the
fact that they are at the table at all to create systemic change, to use the
khumbaya effect and SoMe to lead and change the world.
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