By Dr Irwin Lim, Rheumatologist
I flew to Canberra today as I was asked to give a talk to all the rheumatology registrars at the Australian Rheumatology Association's Annual Scientific Meeting on Social Media.
Out of the 20+ people in the room, less than half used Facebook. Only 1 had a twitter account. A couple had heard of LinkedIn.
I didn't prepare any slides .
Instead, I just showed them my blog, then tweeted, googled myself, signed into LinkedIn, and checked out Facebook.
And I talked.
I explained why I bothered to blog and why I bothered to have an online presence. Of course I had the same fears about social media and "exposing" myself on the web, as they probably had.
But, over time, my views have evolved and the reason I use "health care social media" (HCSM) was to educate, to learn, to connect, to be accessible and to improve the profile of rheumatology.
I think the talk was received well but it's hard to know.
I'm not sure if anyone in that room will end up taking that next step but it was still worth giving them a different perspective.
