Medical Twitter

[gro2001]

Do you folks use Twitter for professional/academic purposes? If so: what do you do? Do you have a "professional" twitter account? Who is good to follow?

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[deleted109597]

#FOAMed is good.
Character limits make you be concise.
I only have professional twitter. It has my name and picture on it. I do this so I don't post stupid or inflammatory statements. Well, I still tell off anti-vaxxers, but everything else is off limits. No politics, no religion, etc. Not even much non-professional stuff.

 

[Zebra Hunter]

People to follow:

Salim Rezaie- Lit review and FOAM highlights
(our own) Ryan Radecki- lit review
Rick Pescatore- posts a lot about clinical stuff, but often can clutter up feed with political posts and Facebook-like posts about personal stuff, he also can be kinda irritating.
Stephen Smith- ECG god
Ken Milne- lit review
Justin Morgensten- lit review
Joel Topf- nephrologist, but tweets interesting stuff
Amal Mattu- obviously you know him, but I think Smith’s stuff is way more informative and useful (I can only hear about hyperkalemia ECGs so many times)
Glaucomflecken (sp?)- Gomerblog contributor, he’s funny
Eric Funk- recently started following him since he started the medmal review website. I don’t really agree with some of his takes on documentation (he has no formal medmal experience or training), but I like the cases he posts.
Rory Speigel- The EM nihilist, and also the best lit reviewer of anyone out there.
EMCrit- I’m sure you know them
Anand Swaminathan- posts a lot of clinical stuff
I’m sure I’m missing a few, but most of the above are solid.

People to probably avoid:

Esther Choo- I’m very liberal, and even I can’t stand her. Had to unfollow her because she posts a hundred times a day and it is literally all political, and frequently very misinformed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her post something clinical. Follow her if you want to hear about “manels”, fictional gender wage gaps, ranting about politics, posts about how there should be at least 40% women on every medical conference speaker list or panel (even if women don’t make up 40% of the specialty).

Eugene Gu- the idiot former vandy surgery resident that got himself fired for frequently lying and talking cr*p about his program while still in it. He seems to consider himself a medical expert despite not finishing residency because he has 200k twitter followers.

 

[njac]

#FOAMed is good.
Character limits make you be concise.
I only have professional twitter. It has my name and picture on it. I do this so I don't post stupid or inflammatory statements. Well, I still tell off anti-vaxxers, but everything else is off limits. No politics, no religion, etc. Not even much non-professional stuff.

Same.

Some political but very minimal.

 

[gro2001]

People to follow:

Salim Rezaie- Lit review and FOAM highlights
(our own) Ryan Radecki- lit review
Rick Pescatore- posts a lot about clinical stuff, but often can clutter up feed with political posts and Facebook-like posts about personal stuff, he also can be kinda irritating.
Stephen Smith- ECG god
Ken Milne- lit review
Justin Morgensten- lit review
Joel Topf- nephrologist, but tweets interesting stuff
Amal Mattu- obviously you know him, but I think Smith’s stuff is way more informative and useful (I can only hear about hyperkalemia ECGs so many times)
Glaucomflecken (sp?)- Gomerblog contributor, he’s funny
Eric Funk- recently started following him since he started the medmal review website. I don’t really agree with some of his takes on documentation (he has no formal medmal experience or training), but I like the cases he posts.
Rory Speigel- The EM nihilist, and also the best lit reviewer of anyone out there.
EMCrit- I’m sure you know them
Anand Swaminathan- posts a lot of clinical stuff
I’m sure I’m missing a few, but most of the above are solid.

People to probably avoid:

Esther Choo- I’m very liberal, and even I can’t stand her. Had to unfollow her because she posts a hundred times a day and it is literally all political, and frequently very misinformed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her post something clinical. Follow her if you want to hear about “manels”, fictional gender wage gaps, ranting about politics, posts about how there should be at least 40% women on every medical conference speaker list or panel (even if women don’t make up 40% of the specialty).

Eugene Gu- the idiot former vandy surgery resident that got himself fired for frequently lying and talking cr*p about his program while still in it. He seems to consider himself a medical expert despite not finishing residency because he has 200k twitter followers.

Thanks for the recs!

Do you integrate twitter into teaching somehow? Class hashtags? Lecture live tweets?

 

[Birdstrike]

Do you folks use Twitter for professional/academic purposes?

No. I use it only to catch up on breaking news, mindless pop culture or political-junkie stuff. But most of that just takes you into the cesspool that twitter is: Incorrect knee-jerk reactions, online lynch mobs, fake outrage and fake news. Twitter seems to concentrate the worst of everything that is bad about the internet, which I think makes it much worse for professional and academic purposes than some other avenues. But the concise, immediacy of it makes it toxically addicting.

 

[deleted109597]

No. I use it only to catch up on breaking news, mindless pop culture or political-junkie stuff. But most of that just takes you into the cesspool that twitter is: Incorrect knee-jerk reactions, online lynch mobs, fake outrage and fake news. Twitter seems to concentrate the worst of everything that is bad about the internet, which I think makes it much worse for professional and academic purposes than some other avenues. But the concise, immediacy of it makes it toxically addicting.

Think of it as a newstand. You can buy the WSJ, or you can buy the National Enquirer. Hell, there's even Playboys there if you want.

 

[WhatNext]

People to probably avoid:

Esther Choo- I’m very liberal, and even I can’t stand her. Had to unfollow her because she posts a hundred times a day and it is literally all political, and frequently very misinformed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her post something clinical. Follow her if you want to hear about “manels”, fictional gender wage gaps, ranting about politics, posts about how there should be at least 40% women on every medical conference speaker list or panel (even if women don’t make up 40% of the specialty).

I hope this is not considered "spam" to resurrect this post, but I think this is relevant new info: Choo is now being accused in a lawsuit of not taking it seriously when she became aware that a resident at OHSU had sexually harassed and sexually assaulted a hospital employee.
She apparently blocked the lawyers involved in the suit on twitter (you can read about this on the hashtag #ChooKnew over on twitter) so it seems like she may be trying to pretend it all never happened. I think people need to know this happened. If half of what the lawsuit talks about is true, there seems to be a major issue at OHSU.

 

[alpinism]

Their residency program has been nothing short of a complete disaster for the past couple years.

 

[Birdstrike]

I hope this is not considered "spam" to resurrect this post, but I think this is relevant new info: Choo is now being accused in a lawsuit of not taking it seriously when she became aware that a resident at OHSU had sexually harassed and sexually assaulted a hospital employee.
She apparently blocked the lawyers involved in the suit on twitter (you can read about this on the hashtag #ChooKnew over on twitter) so it seems like she may be trying to pretend it all never happened. I think people need to know this happened. If half of what the lawsuit talks about is true, there seems to be a major issue at OHSU.

I started reading this complaint and it's one helluva mess of allegations of sexual harassment, sexual assault, intimidation, mixed in with overdoses of egoism and woke-hypocrisy. Also there's allegedly quite an interesting and racist (alleged) quote from a text by Dr. Choo on page 21.

 

[Zebra Hunter]

I hope this is not considered "spam" to resurrect this post, but I think this is relevant new info: Choo is now being accused in a lawsuit of not taking it seriously when she became aware that a resident at OHSU had sexually harassed and sexually assaulted a hospital employee.
She apparently blocked the lawyers involved in the suit on twitter (you can read about this on the hashtag #ChooKnew over on twitter) so it seems like she may be trying to pretend it all never happened. I think people need to know this happened. If half of what the lawsuit talks about is true, there seems to be a major issue at OHSU.

Yup, she's an obnoxious clout chaser who clearly cares more about herself than the causes she claims to support. She told a sexual assault victim that it is never worth it to report an incident. Then told the sexual assault victim she would "sit down with him" rather than report him. Only when the victim gave evidence that the assaulter had a known history of sexual harassment with reports from others did she take her seriously, and amazingly despite being a self described expert in these situations stated "OMG how should we handle?" Despite the obvious answer being to report the assaulter to HR given that she is a mandatory reporter. She then continues to tweet at and take pictures with the assaulter for months. She finally gets called out by the victim, claims ignorance regarding the victim's reports of sexual assault, and then gets defensive and states she only tweeted at him because it was a supposed twitter "emergency" and then says "I don't need policing by white women". This last statement falls in line with a past racist tweet where she stated "white people can be exhausting". This incident just demonstrates that not only does she have passing racist thoughts, but actually acts on these racist thoughts by literally accosting a sexual assault victim for her race.

I guess "she for she", "believe the victim always", and taking a hard stance on workplace sexual harassment/assault are only important things unless your twitter friend is the assaulter or the victim is white. I don't know if she should lose her job, but she certainly should not be the face of Times Up Healthcare or gender and racial equity in medicine, as she is clearly part of the problem she claims to be fighting against.

 

[xaelia]

One easy way to find people to follow is see who other folks follow.

For example:

https://twitter.com/emlitofnote/following

Obviously, some of those are specific to my health informatics interests, local New Zealand culture, or just for fun – but you get the idea.

 

[Frazier]

There is a lot of cringeworthy stuff on twitter. When you find gold nugget accounts, keep them close! Researchers tend to have strong content.

My own little pet peeve is accounts where >25% of tweets start "I dont know who needs to hear this..."

It is not helpful and I can best describe it as "yuck". You'll develop your aversion too.

 

[EctopicFetus]

A more snark filled self important person than EChoo hasn’t existed in EM. Am I right in remembering O John Ma left that same residency amongst a bunch of claims of inappropriate stuff.

 

[southerndoc]

A more snark filled self important person than EChoo hasn’t existed in EM. Am I right in remembering O John Ma left that same residency amongst a bunch of claims of inappropriate stuff.

She certainly seems to have changed since she was an attending when I was a resident.

 

[TheComebacKid]

The amount of self-righteous, woke hypocrisy and ego stroking by EM physicians in particular on social media (and specifically twitter) is pretty nauseating. It's amazing how some of these folks, many in academics, actually have made careers out of being "Chief Social Media Officers" and get clinical buy down. It's a scam.

If there's a shortage of narcissistic physician colleagues in your life, who find validation in posting a continuous stream of selfies with mask lines on their face and an intentionally disheveled appearance with extremely enlightening hashtags such as #stayhomeforme, #covidwarrior, you will find Twitter to be a useful tool.

If you are looking for actually decent FOAMed content, just go directly the sites themselves, such as RebelEM, EMDocs, EMCases, First 10 EM, EMCrit etc and browse around periodically.

 

[Radetzky]

99% is people espousing stupid dogmatic stances like never use tramadol or never use any amount of crystalloid in a bleeding patient, or people being self righteous/virtue signalling as above, or some combo of both. 1% is actually really clinically interesting stuff.

 

[Franzd'Epinay]

It's amazing how some of these folks, many in academics, actually have made careers out of being "Chief Social Media Officers" and get clinical buy down. It's a scam

This actually happens?

 

[cyanide12345678]

Do you folks use Twitter for professional/academic purposes? If so: what do you do? Do you have a "professional" twitter account? Who is good to follow?

One of my previous attendings does it, has 120k followers. A lot of ekgs and echos that he posts with clinical education. The dude truly enjoys teaching.

 

[WheezyBaby]

There is a lot of cringeworthy stuff on twitter. When you find gold nugget accounts, keep them close!

My own little pet peeve is accounts where >25% of tweets start "I dont know who needs to hear this..."

yuck. You'll develop your aversion too.

"that's it. That's the tweet."

It grinds on me.


And agree about Choo, followed then quickly unfollowed

 

[DeadCactus]

Twitter's like being at a conference 24/7. Some good content, some good networking, some people hosting useless committees or putting on yoga sessions, and a grand opportunity to say something stupid in public and suffer for it.

I use it for two reasons: to follow most of the key players in my niche area of interest to stay in the loop and to follow a smattering of big names in random fields out of curiosity and horizon broadening.

I think it can be an effective tool for marketing yourself professionally but that takes focused effort beyond just treating it like some sort of professional Facebook. I don't fall into this category.