This post from podcasting guru Jason Van Orden leaped out and grabbed me by the eyeballs.
If you look at the date of this post…and the date of my last one, I think the reason will be obvious.
Podfading, or postfading, or whatever you choose to call it, are very real issues for medpros. In MEDicine, the tendency is to be hyper diligent, and as a PROfessional, you want your output to be polished, and assume that your audience expects the same.
Add that all up, and you can get some pretty long gaps between your posts. And your show can disappear entirely, if you’re not careful.
I’ve been in medical podcasting for close to 2 years now — about half the duration it’s been fairly popular as a new medium. (That’s not me in the pic, BTW, it’s an older gent, courtesy of iStockphoto, embodying today’s theme: maturity is a good thing.)
I started out as an interested rank beginner who knew squat about recording and Internet dissemination of audio, but who was totally taken with the possibility of getting my own shows out there.
Besotted, I met some wonderful folk, asked tons of questions, and went to my first Podcast and New Media Expo.
And I noticed something. And thank God I only slowed down instead of stopping.
If you’re not careful, you’ll notice it, too — and be tempted to make a potentially crappy decision.
Or for that matter, to enter the New Media space in any way, as a medical professional.
Today’s show answers the “Why now?” question using an analogy any medpro can relate to: the elective timing of a necessary surgery.
You can “pay me now,” taking care of the inevitable on your own terms, at the lowest risk to you, with the greatest chance of success.
Or you can “pay me later,” when you’re dragged puking and feverish into an emergency operation, with all your important choices being made by others.
The digital — or New Medical Media — space, is wide open, for now. But like any rich and unoccupied niche, it’s only a matter of time before it gets filled. Once it does, by your competitors or colleagues, it’ll be much harder for you to stand out, and be chosen by new patients searching for health care providers on the Internet.
And believe it: it is only a matter of time before you are pushed or pulled into the digital space, by the organizational forces you are beholden to, or your patients. EVERYONE is either communicating here, or will be.
…to take your medical practice online in a major way.
Stake out your corner of the Internet if you haven’t, and dust off all your social weapons if you have.
If you’re a practicing medical professional, there’s no better or more advantageous time to enter this space, using tools like blogging, social networking, and of course, podcasting.
Next time, on Podcasting For Medical Professionals.
Plain and simple, medpros are dusty old farts when it comes to the Internet and modern technology. You know: what everyone else is using to learn and talk about current events, their health, their job prospects, their friends and coworkers…their healthcare providers.
The critical stuff.
Health and Human Services Director, Michael Leavitt, recently put it like this:
It’s obvious that the medical establishment has yet to complete the jump to the Internet Age. Our health care system has fallen behind every sector of our economy, from car repairs to manufacturing to air travel, for no good reason. There’s something wrong when you can walk away from a bank or mechanic with a detailed, easy-to-read printout but, when it comes to your health, you’re left hoping the pharmacist can make out the doctor’s handwriting.
He was referring specifically to the lack of EMR adoption in 90% of doctors’ offices, but the problem goes way beyond that. For the vast majority of American medpros, it’s an Internet mindset problem of epidemic proportions.
If you’re reading this, you’re by definition ahead of 99% of our profession. You know what a blog is, what a podcast is, and you’re likely familiar with terms like RSS, social networking, and New Media.
Even if you’re not a podcaster, you likely communicate via email, use computers in your daily personal or professional life, and garner information about The World via online news services or feed readers.
Many of our colleagues still vaguely think of the Internet as a collection of fancy, online Smith Corona typewriters. You don’t want to know how many.
Check out the following YouTube video, and compare your tech competence to some savvy power users. Only, this isn’t about how businessmen in Belgium communicate and think via the Internet, or surgical chiefs in Hanover, or even Silicon Valley geeks.
It’s about how typical American college students — the cream of the world’s crop, the pinnacle of human intellectual development — have integrated the Internet and social media into every aspect of their lives, of which studying is (still) a tiny part.
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