Going Viral: Social Media in the Age of COVID

I have been thinking about the role of social media in the pandemic. This is the first medical crisis not the age of the public physician and social media. It has resulted in some some fascinating developments. Some of the changes that came about because of the pandemic will indelibly change medicine and most of them are for the better.

I started thinking about it this past August as part of an invited essay on the topic by Blood Purification. I worked this paper with The Curbsiders’ Paul Williams. We looked at the role of public physicians this time of intense public interest.

We leaned into the definition of public physician created by Bryan Vartabedian. Take a look at the manuscript (PDF link).

I used that paper as a jumping off point for a talk I gave on Social Media and the Pandemic for the Renal Research Institute. I started focused talk on the changes in medical education, looking at how traditional medical education fell apart in the face of social distancing while FOAMed took off.

The RRI is the research arm of Fresenius and they run a top notch nephrology meeting every year. This year, the meeting is in May but they had a few speakers record their talks for release in January. Mine just came out.

I recorded that lecture in mid-late December.

The most recent thinking on this topic was for Innovations in Media and Education Delivery (iMED) Initiative at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center first annual conference. I had the honor of presenting the keynote talk. Here I continued my focus on the impact the pandemic had on medical education and the role FOAMed played. A lot of the bones of the talk were there in the RRI talk but the connective tissue is much stronger.

There is no public recording of the talk, but you can take a look at my slides:

KeynoteThe Pandemic blows up #FOAMed (526 MB)

PowerPoint: The Pandemic blows up #FOAMed (251 MB) Note: I create, rehearse and deliver the presentation in Keynote. The PowerPoint version is a simple export of the Keynote presentation and often looks like garbage. If you want to see the presentation as it was meant to be, use Keynote.

PDF: The Pandemic blows up #FOAMed (86MB)

New tweet, Old presentation

We tweet and think the tweet evaporates after a day or two (actually, that’s particularly optimistic, most disappear after an hour or two) but occasionally a reply can come from the distant past like a message from a deep space probe.

Today, someone replied to a tweet I wrote in May of 2019.

I’m not sure if The Drug Policy Organization ever posted the webinar, but I now realize that I never posted the slides to my website. So here they are:

Keynote | PDF | Powerpoint

I also made a movie of the demo part of the presentation. I tried to show the logic and process of building a visual abstract.

And here is a screencast of the entire presentation:

Thanks for the nudge Salina!

Contrast Associated or Contrast Induced Nephropathy? Who the hell knows. St John Ascension Grand Rounds

Everyone talks about the importance of mentors in career development, but there is another type of Fairy God Mother that doesn’t get as much press but can be just as important, this is the Sponsor. A sponsor doesn’t give advice and guide you like a mentor does, but when opportunities come up they think of you and put your name forward.

The most important sponsor in my career has been Chief of Medicine at Ascension St John, Lou Saravolatz. As a fellow, Dr. Saravolatz discovered a bug now known as Methicillin Resistant Staph Aureus (remind me, what world changing research are you doing in your fellowship?). But as Chief of Medicine he has been my (and a host of other docs) sponsor. Dr Saravolatz invited me to give my first grand rounds presentation in 2003. A talk on contrast nephropathy.

Today, I gave another talk on contrast nephropathy. Here are the files. I will try to get a video with my narration up in the next few days.

Keynote

Powerpoint (I just export the Keynote presentation to Powerpoint so I suspect many of the animations are crap. It is here just to preempt the chorus of Twitter requests for it)

PDF

Here is a video of this presentation Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Department of Medicine grand rounds.

I also am posting the talk bit-by-bit as #Tweetorials.

The first:

The second

The third

The fourth

The social media and medical education talk at Vanderbilt

Earlier this year I got the opportunity to speak at Brigham and Women’s Nephrology division. I had spent a lot of time and thought in updating my Social Media and Medical Education talk. For the first time I added Podcasts and Tweetorials, two of the most exciting developments in social media medical education.

Then on the day of my presentation I had “technical problems” connecting my MacBook Air to BWH’s projector (what is this 2003?). So I logged into iCloud and ran an older version of the presentation from iCloud using the online version of Keynote on the PC connected to the projector. The idea that I can run my presentation, with fonts, images, animations on a browser version of Keynote on a PC is truly amazing. Hats off to the Apple engineers.

But that meant the newest version of the talk was still “unpublished.” So I was delighted to get a generous invitation from Vanderbilt to speak at medicine grand rounds.

So this past Thursday I traveled to Nashville and I was able to present this presentation. And now that it is “published”, I am offering the presentation for you to present, edit and repurpose in any way you desire (no permission required, go at it):

  • Keynote (this is the native format) (1.16 gb)
  • Powerpoint (this is an exported version of the native Keynote, so it has questionable fidelity) (744.7 mb)
  • PDF (317 mb)

And what an amazing nephrology department. Holy moly what a deep bench. Loved getting a chance to talk with Ray Harris, Anna Burgner, Tom Golper, Jay Bhave, Kerri Cavanaugh, Alp Ikizler, Julie Lewis, Be a Concepcion, Davika Nair, Leslie Gewin. and Edward Gould.

If you are applying to nephrology fellowship and don’t have Vanderbilt on your list, you are doing it wrong.

Metabolic alkalosis and hypokalemia go together like Phineas and Ferb

This is one of my favorite lectures. It starts with Izzy getting fired on Grey’s Anatomy to the metabolic consequences of crack cocaine in dialysis patients to the imaginary monogenic diseases of Ethan Hawke and Denzel Washington. Metabolic alkalosis is a topic that is rarely taught at all. This lecture goes deep tying metabolic alkalosis to potassium handling (as does the kidney). The lecture covers a lot of useful kidney physiology. In addition to metabolic alkalosis it covers some of the salt wasting nephropathies and monogenic causes of hypertension.

Keynote | PDF

Lecture on hyperosmolar hypotonic hyponatremia

This is a formal lecture on the Tweetorial I posted about a patient with beer drinkers potomania but presented with increased serum osmolality due to ethanol intoxication.


KeynotePowerPointPDF

Note: The presentations are designed to be displayed in KeyNote, the powerpoint version may be weird, especially the animations, and some of the icons maybe jaggy.

Following the lecture Scott and I recorded an episode of the EMCrit podcast, episode number 242! Scott Weingart is a medical education revolutionary. If you are interested in learning about him check out this episode of Explore the Space.

All my Posts for Medical Students at OUWB

I have had the honor to teach the M2s since the medical school opened it’s doors. Here are the blog posts I have written to answer medical students questions or to post the latest materials (Handouts, Keynotes).

OUWB Question: What’s going on with this mess?

OUWB Question: What’s going on with this mess?

I create all of my presentations in Keynote. In

OUWB Student question: Do I need to memorize all of these equations?

OUWB Student question: Do I need to memorize all of these equations?

No. You will be provided an equation cheat.

OUWB student question on ammonium production and potassium

OUWB student question on ammonium production and potassium

How does hyperkalemia or even alkalosis suppress

OUWB: So you’re lost in renal and looking for a map

OUWB: So you’re lost in renal and looking for a map

If you are a reader and need a book to help you

OUWB: Podcasts of interest

If you are taking the M2 renal class and are

OUWB 2023: Regarding the upcoming TBL

OUWB 2023: Regarding the upcoming TBL

I received an email questioning what to read in

More OUWB M2 questions and Answers

The question: I am going through the real well