I was asked by a clinical researcher today what the point was of social media. To put this in context, this is about site that I set up 10 months ago, in a niche area of neuroscience research. The blog now has a steady 4000 unique visitors a month, 7000 page views all through the use of social media. The point may seem obvious, except it was the owner of the site who was asking me.

I was about to trot off the stats in order to justify my existence but then thought, he’s right. Can I really measure the effect? Can I provide evidence-based results that shows that those 4000 visitors have had a positive impact from visiting the blog, and that it has improved their clinical practice?

I can provide readership stats, but clinical impact. Nope.

After evesdropping into the conversation Doctors were having about their use of social media, I came back to thoughts in a previous post on how a busy clinician would use social media – and speculated that there are two ways it can be used – in actual clinical practice and as an information source.  It’s all very well to theorise, but is it actually the case?

This from Vegard Ølstørn, a manual therapist in Norway:

I started blogging as a manual therapist in February 2010. I wanted to do this because of mainly three things. I thought that was a way of keeping myself professionally updated. My thought was to write down a summary of interested things I read, write down how I am working, what I am thinking about my work and maybe present exercises I give etc. This way I put some pressure on myself to think twice why I do what I do.

My blogging is also done as information to my patients before or after they see me. Google listings for advertisement is important, and if patients read how I work before they come to see me, I think that is a positive start. I am also planning to use the blog as a resource for patients, where they can read about exercises and things I have presented after treatments.

Lastly, blogging also builds my professional brand amongst my peers. Other clinicians can comment on my way of doing things and interesting discussions hopefully comes out. I find it interesting to read how other clinicians solve their daily challenges, so it is nice to share my view on things.

Status today is that traffic to my site is increasing and I have got both new patients as well as interested clinicians from my blogging. For the word ‘manuellterapi’ I am scoring 4th in the Norwegian google search, so the traffic is increasing. I like it.

I really liked the quote by Dr Mike (@sandnsurf):

“Blogging can be lonely. Especially lonely if we constantly rely on viewer stats, page rank and comment counts to justify the time we take to document our cogitations …but I am surfing the blogging wave to taste the salt water; feel the rush of wind in my face; and brush up against dolphins…not to observe from the beach, ice cream in hand, blistered by the rays of apathy and indifference.”

Thanks Vegard, and if you have a case study that you would like to have included contact me.

Using social media in clinical practice covers a big spectrum, from attacting certain clients (marketing) to getting the message out about what you do (content distribution) to keeping up to date with what is happening in your area.  The previous post focused on how to use social media in practice to get your professional profile online, this post focuses on how to keep up to date.

Credit: www.CoxandForkum.com

Keeping up with research using social media

There are many sites which put out new research and information on a regular basis, for example ‘Neuroscience and pain science for manual physical therapists’[1], which is run by a Canadian physiotherapist Diane Jacobs, or ‘Body in Mind’[2], which is run by a clinical science research team at Neuroscience Research Australia. Other sites, such as Research Blogging[3] or Science blogs[4] do the aggregating and sifting of other sites for you and you choose the topics in which you are interested. Public Facebook pages can be read without joining Facebook and one can consider such sites as a bit like a public newspaper, only free.

If you want to tap into social media networks with your own site, work out who your site is for – clinicians, researchers, Joe public – and then tap into the relevant social networks. in this case the primary goal might be dissemination of information. Again, virtual networks eventually convert to physical networks as people communicate and spread the word. Or, as Harvard Professor Nicholas Christakis said:

‘Our experience of the world depends on the architecture of the ties around us, it depends on the actual structure of the networks in which we are residing and on all the kinds of things that ripple and flow through the network.’[5].

References

[1] http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/Neuroscience-and-Pain-Science-for-Manual-Physical-Therapists/114879238784
[2] http://bodyinmind.com.au
[3] http://researchblogging.org
[4] http://scienceblogs.com
[5] http://heidiallen.id.au/study-of-the-influence-of-social-networks-from-a-health-perspective/

“How do you trust what you’re reading is quality?”  “When does quality become quality?” These are recurring themes encountered with regard to some of the websites that offer free content. However, aggregator sites gather content of a certain standard or type which may offer an alternative to some of the more traditional ways of peer review or defining quality.

Academic Earth

This is an excellent new educational resource which gathers video lectures from leading Universities such as MIT, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley.  Lectures are free to use and download and there is plan to include social features for users.  As an example:

Private Equity and the Financial Crisis — Yale University lecture by Stephen Schwarzman Co-Founder of Blackstone Group

For a more detailed description on Academic Earth see also Life in the Fast lane’s Academic Earth Open Source Lecture Series.

Science Blogs

This site features bloggers from a wide array of scientific disciplines and only includes those posts which have reached a high academic standard. Launched in January 2006, ScienceBlogs claims to have the largest online community dedicated to science.

Research Blogging

Research Blogging  automatically aggregates only blog posts about peer-reviewed research, many of which appear in Science Blogs and can be recognized by the green tick telling reader they are reading a blog on peer reviewed research.  If you don’t know this site I can highly recommend having a look – topics covered range from Computer Science to Psychology.

YouTube EDU

Newly launched, YouTubeEdu collects all the educational content being uploaded on YouTube by Colleges and Universities.  However, in this case there is no guarantee being made of educational quality and the standards will undoubtedly vary but it is another excellent resource.

Universities providing free content

Although not aggregator sites as such, it is probable that top Universities offering content on a variety of subjects will have reached a certain standard.  Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in addition to providing OpenCourseWare recently opted to publish their research articles free online (in addition to sending them to journals for publication) in order to give greater access to the university’s scholarship. Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences have also decided on a similar policy.  The Education Portal lists some of the best free online University courses available.
Overall, does content go through as rigorous a review process compared with more traditional routes – maybe, maybe not. There are new ideas like GPeerReview being developed, however, for sites such as Academic Earth, ScienceBlogs, or MIT to be able to continue to draw traffic by virtue of hosting only the best means they must ensure that content meets their standards – much in the same way as happens in the more traditional routes of peer review.

For more information on the role of blogs as institutional educational tools which also tackles the issue of quality control very well see an article published by PLoS Biol: Advancing Science through Conversations: Bridging the Gap between Blogs and the Academy.