Saturday, March 24, 2012

The Risk of Avoiding Social Media: Others Get to Say Who You Are

If you want to let others say who you are, don't dive into social media.  If you are too shy about the prospect, then don't complain when surveys like this are published:

Cardiologists, for the most part, drive Japanese cars, believe in a higher power, and are moderately savvy when it comes to social media. Those are just some of the pearls from a lifestyle survey of physicians conducted by Medscape and published online today.
Asked to rank their level of happiness outside of their work on a scale of 1 to 5, the 762 cardiologists who replied to the survey provided an average happiness score of 3.92. That puts them 15th out of the 25 specialties surveyed, where rheumatologists, dermatologists, and urologists were the happiest, with scores of 4.04 to 4.09, and neurologists were, it seems, the glummest about their nonworking lives, with scores of 3.88. 

Poor neurologists...  They get slammed by a WebMD poll that only received a 10% response rate from physicians. 

-Wes

PS:  For those attending the American College of Cardiology Scientific Sessions in Chicago this weekend, I'll be speaking more about social media's roles for physicians TONIGHT (details here).  Please feel free to join me.

1 comment:

Mark Browne said...

Wes, well said. Although we are all going to have to get used to a higher degree of subjective evaluation of our performance, it's hard to complain if you don't participate in the discussion. SocMed's other great value, as you know, is the ability it gives us to listen. Although not the info is sound, much can be learned through active listening about what is being said on SocMed. Good luck with your presentation at the ACC. I'm looking forward to seeing some of your colleagues join us out here in the land of social media.

-Mark