A thoughtful colleague of mine observed yesterday that, although there is a range of ways clinicians get clinical information about suicide (articles, workshops, books, practice manuals), a lot of clinical learning takes place informally–by doing the work and by talking with other clinicians. That is probably especially true for the busiest front-line clinicians.
I later reflected about what this could mean in terms of Web 2.0 opportunities to change clinician behavior. First, the narrative, personal feel of blogs might appeal to clinicians in a way that practice manuals and official websites don’t. Second, the conversational opportunities of wiki (Wiki in wikipedia, Using Wiki in Education), RSS feeds, podcasts, and other Web 2.0 venues also have potential to reach people in a fresh way.
Would a front-line clinician who does not regularly read research journals subscribe to a weekly 10 minute podcast conversation between a suicide researcher and a clinician who works with high-risk patients? Maybe. It’s mostly an empirical question at this point, but there are several experiments going on in the field, some of which are on my blogroll.
Anthony, interesting post. I’m working on using these tools to improve communication and education at my hospital. We are using phpbb as a status board so that the inpt psych unit and the ER know what’s going on and can better communicate things like bed status (it used to be that the ED would get a different answer depending on who picked up the phone on the inpt unit, and what they knew about the current status of discharges and admissions).
I am playing around with the idea of using a wiki, but it has to be as easy to use as email of many will feel technologically overwhelmed. I have not EVEN mentioned to anyone about our psychiatry podcast. One step at a time.
Thanks for your comment. I love your blog and podcast. Great to hear about your efforts at using collaborative software in the hospital. Yes, wiki would be ideal in our settings. Unfortunately, enterprise-level wikis cost $$ and require buy-in at the IT administration, which, at many medical centers tend to be pretty conservative.
About the fact that you don’t mention your podcast: I think that is so interesting. Look for a future post about my experience beginning to share with my colleagues about my blog.
Thanks, again! Tony
As a clinician who works with many crisis clients and a trainer, I definitely would make use of web 2.0 tools for both learning and teaching. Our field has been lagging in the technology department, yet use of podcasting and blogs are, I believe, a viable way to help busy clinicians keep up to date with developments in the field and to be connected to a broader community of like minded professionals.
Regarding the IT buy-in… I was able to convince our IT folks to do this by first asking them to develop a communication tool to improve our ED-inpt unit communication to improve the admission process. When they said they’d do it but had no budget for it, I asked them to set up the open-source phpbb and I would manage it. They dragged their feet on it, but when I threatened to set it up myself on my own server, they finally set it up. Being Chairman of the Dept, I was able to get away with that kind of bluster. It has been a real success.
I am looking forward to hear your experience with “decloaking” your blog.
Amy, great to hear your comments. I agree our field definitely lags behind. I’m not quite sure why, but I suspect it has to do with some primal fears about losing the personal touch and/or issues about confidentiality. Not rational, just reflexive. I think it is also a new phenomenon that the web is a social environment–people still think of it as an isolated experienced for people lacking social or interpersonal skill!
Roy: Gutsy move to threaten hosting it on your own server! Good to know, though, that in the end they saw your wisdom!
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