Twice last year (March and June) I blogged about doctors who provide medical advice in a tweet. Now I found out that doctors are being paid by pharma companies to tweet about specific medications. And doctors who use social media do not disclose that they have been paid to do so.
So now I am even more on the side of medical advice for me will not come for a tweet. Their impact on my life will be the same as an ad for a pharma product - I ignore them and wait until my doctor tells me about it.
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label twitter. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Thursday, June 11, 2015
Doctors on Twitter
A while back, I blogged about getting medical advice on Twitter. I am clearly on the fence about this one. I found an article on Cure Magazine on doctors who tweet which discusses gaps in knowledge between doctors and patients.
It is clear that there are gaps between what a doctor knows and what a patient does - that's because they went to medical school and we didn't. I think if knowledge can be shared between the two groups that is great.
However the volume of cancer information tweeted by doctors on cancer is clearly skewed. Breast cancer is the most tweeted, 19%, followed by lung cancer, 9%, which does not reflect the number of diagnoses. So if you have breast cancer you can probably find a lot of information on Twitter, particularly on the Monday #BSCM chats where a single doctor, the host, (who I follow but rarely read) generates most of the tweets.
Blah, blah, blah, this is all great. But (and you knew that was coming) I don't really care.
I mean I am on Twitter and have been on it since about 2007. But I am not a huge user. My blog generates a tweet every day and I do sometimes go read and follow and reply to tweets but not often. And I know a lot of people who are online but don't use Twitter for whatever reason either.
So go ahead and get information on Twitter if you want. But its a small number of patients and a small number of doctors who generate most of the information. I'm okay with this. I can't read every bit of information out there on my ailments and can only absorb some of it anyway (more than my brain capacity). But if you tweet and like getting information Twitter, you can.
It is clear that there are gaps between what a doctor knows and what a patient does - that's because they went to medical school and we didn't. I think if knowledge can be shared between the two groups that is great.
However the volume of cancer information tweeted by doctors on cancer is clearly skewed. Breast cancer is the most tweeted, 19%, followed by lung cancer, 9%, which does not reflect the number of diagnoses. So if you have breast cancer you can probably find a lot of information on Twitter, particularly on the Monday #BSCM chats where a single doctor, the host, (who I follow but rarely read) generates most of the tweets.
Blah, blah, blah, this is all great. But (and you knew that was coming) I don't really care.
I mean I am on Twitter and have been on it since about 2007. But I am not a huge user. My blog generates a tweet every day and I do sometimes go read and follow and reply to tweets but not often. And I know a lot of people who are online but don't use Twitter for whatever reason either.
So go ahead and get information on Twitter if you want. But its a small number of patients and a small number of doctors who generate most of the information. I'm okay with this. I can't read every bit of information out there on my ailments and can only absorb some of it anyway (more than my brain capacity). But if you tweet and like getting information Twitter, you can.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
#IStandWithLisa
In case you missed the ferfuffle in the land of cancer blogging and tweeting, allow me to fill you in. Ann also wrote about this and you can see her opinion over here as well.
Lisa Bonchek Adams has stage IV breast cancer and tweets a lot about her life with cancer. You can follow her @adamslisa on Twitter or her blog. She is living her life as best she can and talks about it on line through tweets and blog posts.
Then along came Emma, who we will call the Idiot for lack of a better term, who wrote for the Guardian and compared tweeting to funeral selfies - really? Hence the name. What she wrote was taken down by the Guardian after a day or two but you can read it here. (See things on the Internet never really go away).
The Idiot complains that Lisa tweets too much. Is that really possible? Some people have conversations and dialogues on Twitter so they might have a high volume of tweets. So what?
And the complaint that of over exposure on twitter becomes a funeral selfie? She is not dead so its not a funeral.
So anyway, the Idiot's column was posted and then many complaints were received and it was taken down because the Guardian said it did not meet their standards.
That was bad enough and then Mr Idiot (her husband) wrote for the New York Times comparing Lisa's fight to I'm not sure what. He did talk about his father's death from cancer in England a few years ago and medical costs but it was fairly pointless in my opinion.
When I first read these articles and the blog posts about them from others in cancer land, I wondered have these two journalism professionals (Mr. and Mrs. Idiot) ever bother to talk to Lisa directly? I do not think so. I could be wrong but their writings were not about Lisa but about her tweets. In professional journalism, isn't it appropriate to contact the subject of their writings? I mean again I could be wrong but in terms of verifying information and all that, isn't that correct?
So I stand with Lisa on this. And Mr and Mrs can go take a hike.
Lisa Bonchek Adams has stage IV breast cancer and tweets a lot about her life with cancer. You can follow her @adamslisa on Twitter or her blog. She is living her life as best she can and talks about it on line through tweets and blog posts.
Then along came Emma, who we will call the Idiot for lack of a better term, who wrote for the Guardian and compared tweeting to funeral selfies - really? Hence the name. What she wrote was taken down by the Guardian after a day or two but you can read it here. (See things on the Internet never really go away).
The Idiot complains that Lisa tweets too much. Is that really possible? Some people have conversations and dialogues on Twitter so they might have a high volume of tweets. So what?
And the complaint that of over exposure on twitter becomes a funeral selfie? She is not dead so its not a funeral.
So anyway, the Idiot's column was posted and then many complaints were received and it was taken down because the Guardian said it did not meet their standards.
That was bad enough and then Mr Idiot (her husband) wrote for the New York Times comparing Lisa's fight to I'm not sure what. He did talk about his father's death from cancer in England a few years ago and medical costs but it was fairly pointless in my opinion.
When I first read these articles and the blog posts about them from others in cancer land, I wondered have these two journalism professionals (Mr. and Mrs. Idiot) ever bother to talk to Lisa directly? I do not think so. I could be wrong but their writings were not about Lisa but about her tweets. In professional journalism, isn't it appropriate to contact the subject of their writings? I mean again I could be wrong but in terms of verifying information and all that, isn't that correct?
So I stand with Lisa on this. And Mr and Mrs can go take a hike.
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