Imagine your love one is in the operation room, you can’t help but get anxious and nervous about the whole procedure.
Time seems to be running in slow motion and every updates seems like an eternity.
Worry no more because Twitter are making its way to hospitals these days. Here how it works; the surgeon perform the operation while dictating what he’s doing to a hospital staff to give Twitter updates to family members. Family members can be at home or just in another room waiting for the updates. One Doctor said family members were less stressed when he greeted them after the operation.
Giving education is also one of the main reason why Twitter is crawling it’s presence in operation rooms.
Dr. Craig Rogers, the lead surgeon in the Henry Ford surgery, said the impetus for his Twittering was to let people know that a tumor can be removed without taking the entire kidney.
“We’re trying to use this as a way to get the word out,” Rogers said.
Observers say Twittering about a procedure is a natural outgrowth of the social networking media revolution.
“Doing this removes a real communication barrier. It helps make something scary much more comprehendable,” said Christopher Parks, co-founder of the Web site changehealthcare.com. “It brings us closer together and makes us more engaged.”
I think this is a great way of communicating to family members about what’s happening in real time and educating the public about the procedure.
Whether this is just new and cool or merely a fad, observers say it’s inevitable that more and more doctors — and patients — will be sharing the real time medical procedure in sites like Twitter and Facebook.
So do you think it’s proper to tweet medical procedures?
Well I guess if the doctor doesn’t mind and the patient doesn’t care then ti’s cool.
Personally I don’t think I woudl want a twitter update saying ops we cut the wrong thing he’s dead meet @ morgue lol.
could you imagine…
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You had me @morgue
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Zee…are you SERIOUS?
Well…I dunno…I don’t think people want a doctor twittering away WHILE they operate on them!!!
Same here C. But the one who’s on Twitter is the assistant not the surgeon or the one who operates on people. He just dictates what he’s doing and the assistant type it on their Twitter account.
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I’m not sure this would be such a wise idea. I know it already happens, well not doctor to patient. But doctors tweeting about their operations. It sounds a bit risky all round, and I can just see a law case involved in there somewhere. It’s not very personal, despite the fact that Technology is all the range where connecting is involved at the moment.
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It sounds weird to me but I think it eases the anxiety among family members especially with long procedures.
@Ana: I think the doctors or the hospital needs an approval first from the patient or patients relatives if they can tweet the operation procedure or not. In most cases its the patient who requested for it.
@Jannice: Yeah I guess that’s the number one reason for doing the tweets.
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I see this as a good and bad thing, especially when certain information could be leaked. My experience with it was more texting, I lived 400 miles away from my fiancé (bf at the time) I couldn’t away be with him when he was going thru his cancer treatments, at one point he was 8 hrs away. I wasn’t able to leave work and my son for a week or more. Between texting and email his Dr. I was able to stay updated with his conditions and even trying different methods of communication when he wasn’t able to respond. I am for this 100%, my stress level was down and didn’t worry as if I didn’t hear from my fiancé for days.
Yes I am with you about helping lowering down the stress level of patient’s relatives. Thanks for leaving a comment Kellie.
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Twitter is marching nicely, as long as the doctor can focus on the patient while operating and doesn’t lose his/her focus by telling the assistant on what to tweet, then it’s okay for me. I always believed that Twitter is good when it comes to telling someone quickly about whats happening but many youngsters etc are taking it too far now otherwise it’s a great service to quickly let any of your followers know about what u’re upto.
Thanks for the visit Mel, I completely agree with what you have said. Besides, the patient has all the right to allow or not to allow tweeting while he/she is on the operating table.
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