Physician Blogging: Is This Really Your Job?

 

Knowledge is power for both doctors and patients

Today we launch this blog for bloggers, the doctorly kind.

In 2010 our marketing and public relations firm begins its twelfth year in the business of helping physicians grow their private practices. In the last two of those 12 years we have extolled the advance of social media – physician blogging in particular – as a win-win.

First, for the patient, we believe the availability of nearly infinite amounts of healthcare information on the Internet has on balance been as significant a breakthrough in medicine as Louis Pasteur’s work in the 19th century and the discovery of sulfa drugs in the 1930s.

Secondly, for the practicing physician, we see the emergence of Web 2.0 as indispensable both to clinical and business success.

In the clinical arena, we are all acutely aware of how much time is consumed in exam rooms in answering the same questions posed by multiple patients. How many hours do doctors spend each month answering the same question repeatedly?

Whatever the answer, this process can be shortcut through the one-to-many conversations now available on the Internet and through blogs especially.

In the 21st century, patients increasingly don’t begin their treatment in a doctor’s office. The groundbreaking work of the Pew Research Center has shown that today’s patients begin treatment on the Web, seeking health care information first and then seeking a health care provider as the second step.

The Internet is nothing if not an immensely powerful and efficient tool of information dissemination. Let it enable you to devote more time, not less, to healing.

I will offer more on this aspect of physician blogging in my next posting.