King hit on the funny bone: Labia room

I love humour.
I love those people who have a great sense of humour. I'm always amazed when someone can come out with just the right response to a situation. I love it when something someone says is so funny, I laugh til tears roll down my face. Quirky, off beat, clever humour like that of the Monty Python team really appeals to me. I can watch their skits and movies over and over again.

However, unkind and derogatory put downs or sling offs aimed at those who are vulnerable I find rude, offensive and inappropriate, not funny.

I also love social media. I love the way the various forms of social media provide an easy and quick way to keep in touch and gain and share information. Twitter, for example, was invaluable to many as a tool of communication during the recent natural disasters. The ability to communicate over huge distances with a minumum of fuss has meant that social media is increasingly used as a tool for health promotion. With that ease of communication enabled by the various social media platforms has come concerns about privacy, online behaviour and confidentiality. A code of conduct for online behaviour, coined 'netiquette' has emerged.

Unfortunately for many, they think their conversations on social media are the same as in the tea room, pub or corridor.

They are not.

They are permanently recorded and therefore able to be read by anyone for all time. A good way to think about it is to consider that what you say on a social media platform is like writing it on the front page of a national newspaper. If you wouldn't want what you are going to say recorded in that way, then don't use social media for that conversation.

Many of us have written about the use of social media for health professionals. I wrote an article earlier this year for midwives in our college newsletter. Still I see indiscretion amongst my colleagues posts at times that I feel concerned about. I do wonder how those who use health care think about some of the comments that are made; how would prospective employers perceive such comments if they were to look.  My understanding is that human resource departments are using social media platforms to find out more about applicants.

So a blogpost about an interaction on twitter between male doctors by Ann Marie Cunningham, a GP and lecturer in Wales UK with an interest in social media caught my attention when she said:

"I came across a discussion between several male doctors on twitter which caused me to reflect on this very topic. The doctors were using slang, which I have not come across before, to refer to the wards in which they might have been working. The terms used were 'labia ward' and 'birthing sheds' to refer to the delivery suite where women give birth, and "cabbage patch" to refer to the intensive care ward where many patients are unconscious.

I was shocked at this and angry and did query the doctors about some of the other things they said, but I felt I couldn't challenge them directly at that time about this language. One of the doctors referred to midwifes as 'madwives'"

The blogpost "Social media, black humour and professionals" and the responses are well worth reading to get a sense of what the doctors themselves and the readers of Ann Marie's blog thinks about these remarks.  There are some very interesting comments on Ann Marie's blog itself, but by far the most fascinating reaction has come on Facebook on the The Medical Registrar's fanpage.

Alongside the link to Ann Marie's blog are the words:

The medical registrar " makes no comment, other than anyone who uses terms like "space" to describe a blog is a humourless old trout until proven otherwise"

The medical registrar didn't need to say anymore, because the readers have made up for it with 72 comments at the time of writing this post. These comments are also worth reading.

The attitudes and values of the people responding are clearly discernable. A former CEO of a large Boston hospital, Paul Levy, has discussed the response to Ann Marie's post on his blog.

Paul Levy wrote that he is 'left aghast' at the some of the comments and found the mindset of a few medical colleagues 'extremely upsetting'.

According to the good doctors however, using those terms "labia wards" and "birthing sheds" for rooms where women give birth and "cabbage patch" for ICU where people are unconscious is just good old fashioned humour, a way to let off steam in a stressful environment. Others, like me, find them offensive and degrading.

Is it purely a case of 'humorless old trouts'? or something else?

What do you think?

Health Care Hashtags Resource on Twitter

I've been learning more and more about Twitter. 

Twitter is a great resource for information about anything you may find interesting.  The river of tweets provides ongoing and rapidly changing news headlines. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. At any moment, you can see what people are experiencing, what is important to them and what they are thinking. If the topic of the 'tweet' is your subject area, then you can choose to interact or not. The stream of information lets you know something of interest about what is important to you. Of course, it's sensible to only 'follow' people who's work/life and/or philosophy is of interest to you.

Last week, in response to something I tweeted, I was invited to join a scheduled twitter chat about the use of social media and healthcare on Sunday night.  Here's the link to the conversation. As the benefits of social media in health care, in particular, maternity services and information sharing, is of great interest to me, I joined in.  I found the process confusing at first. The conversation is like being at a big party where everyone is talking at once.  If you read the transcript of the session you will see what I mean.

How amazing that a transcript of the event can be produced and stored in a virtual file to be accessed at any time! That resource is so useful to me.  I was able to return to the information and read it at my leisure. What's the purpose you may ask?  That conversation has much to offer. I was looking for links to any useful information; I wanted to check out how others are thinking about the use of social media, the benefits and pitfalls of doing so. I was also interested in how practitioners are talking about ways to keep professionally safe using the medium; all of which and there was much more in that conversation to explore,  provides food for thought.

For those of you who are interested in health care, Twitter offers a real opportunity to engage in real time with people from anywhere in the world about your topic of interest, from the comfort of your own home/computer.  No need to travel and lose time in getting to different parts of the world to learn from people who know what you want to know; the only expense is your computer and internet server/connection.  A really important and liberating aspect of Twitter is that there is no 'status' to get in the way of discussion or communication on Twitter.  People who are technology nerds, CEO's, journalists, mothers, fathers, PhD's, scientists of all kinds, anyone who is interested, communicate and collaborate in an open, respectful way about their chosen topic.  If anyone is not respectful, they are 'unfollowed' - no one is interested in 'fighting' or engaging with those who 'troll' and disrupt.

This morning, when I was checking the twitterstream # tags for twitterchats on health care and the use of social media (#hcsm and #hcsmanz), I found a tweet about a site that compiled all the twitter conversations about different aspects of  health care.  That site is found here.   I noted that midwifery didn't have a hashtag, so have filled out the form to create a midwifery presence on that site.  I've just been exploring the site that hosts the hashtag directory  and that web page is interesting too, well worth having a look at and considering what an online presence is all about.

If you are interested in exploring the conversation about health care and social media tonight (Sunday) on twitter, join us using the hashtag #hcsmanz in your twitter posts. If you are not yet on Twitter, go here  to learn about Twitter and to open up an account (it's free) and start tweeting!  You can 'follow' me - which means you follow my conversation. You can tweet back anytime you like in response to any tweet. If you do follow me, then put the hashtag #hcsmanz in the tweet. After you post, you can click on the hashtag and that will take you to the list of tweets about that subject. Then you can save that search as a list which can be accessed, with updates, at any time.

I look forward to our conversations on Twitter.

What do you think, will I see you there?  Comments and questions welcome.