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.

The new Impact Factor for Academia 👇🏼#medEd #SoMe https://t.co/8WlZTIK4I8 pic.twitter.com/Hk1C2qE7uJ

— Jake McClure, M.D. (@jake_mcclure) March 22, 2017

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.

I'm recording a lecture in 2 hours. The premise is the COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest Med Ed challenge ever.

Please reply to this tweet with something smart regarding that statement. pic.twitter.com/oU5oqVlHrl

— Joel M. Topf, MD FACP (@kidney_boy) December 21, 2020

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:

Keynote: The 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)