What Would Osler Say?

There is a certain feeling of disenfranchisement among those of us who were present during the infancy of healthcare social media.  Before the days of twitter, the players were few, the interactions meaningful, and the main mechanism of change was a quaint self publishing tool called a weblog.  We were out to rule the world. Blogs were well written and lengthy.  The expectation was that the comment section would be just as lively as the post itself.  There were no book deals, TED talks, or media interviews.  We were a group of whipper-snappers, bucking the system, and blazing the trail. The advent of twitter and facebook brought welcome improvements.  Our opinions were amplified.  Our numbers grew.  And amazingly enough, the rest of the world took notice.  We were no longer just a group of disgruntled docs.  Patients, advocates, and allied healthcare professionals also joined our ranks.  The winds of change, however, are indifferent to mourning for the past.  Our sacred space became cluttered not only with content, but also self promotion.  Blogs became shorter and to the point.  Comments were slung at each other in small word size tidbits that often lost the subtlety of artful communication.  The noise became at times unbearable.  We see this same type of change happening in the practice of clinical medicine.  We use terms like "creative destructi...
Source: In My Humble Opinion - Category: Family Physicians Authors: Source Type: blogs