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Understanding How Social Media Can Enhance Your Practice

  • May 20, 2021

What if there were a free, accessible way for you to network with leading experts in your field, collaborate with colleagues across the globe, learn about research directly from the investigators, dispel medical myths, and advocate for your patients—all from your smartphone, in the middle of a pandemic? Believe it or not, social media can serve all these purposes and more. For many physicians in training, social media serves as an escape from reality or as a magnifying glass on its less appealing aspects.

However, we seldom think of it as a tool to propel one’s education or medical career. Even after committing to the idea of becoming a #SoMeDoc, it can be intimidating or even exhausting navigating the various platforms and medicine subcultures while also dealing with night-float, morning report, and a never silent pager. No one wants to spend a “Golden Weekend” trying to figure out the difference between an Instagram Story, Twitter Moment, LinkedIn Post, and TikTok video.

In September 2020, APA’s Council on Communications piloted an introduction to social media session at the All Fellows Orientation. Given the enthusiastic reception this presentation received, the Council went on to record it and post it for all members to access on APA’s website. Whether you are just getting curious about whether having a social media presence might be right for you, or you’ve been in the mix for a while and would like to get more out of the whole experience, this recording offers tips and insights that are well worth checking out. Contributors, who collectively have a social media following of over 100,000, include Drs. Howard Liu, Felix Torres, Jack Turban, Jessi Gold, Christina Girgis, Drew Ramsey, Hector Colon-Rivera, and Peter Kramer.

To check out the presentation, “Social Media 101: An Introduction”, log on to APA’s website as a member and find the Practice page, then select Media & Communications. If you would like to invite an APA social media expert to share these tips with your APA component, state association, residency program, or institution, please reach out to the Council’s administrative liaison, communications specialist James Carty, at [email protected]. If you have other suggestions for the Council about other tools that might be useful to our fellows and other members in the future, please reach out to James Carty as well. Hope to see you on social!

By Ebony Caldwell, M.D., M.P.H.,
APA Council on Communications

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