Nima Mehran, MD, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, spoke to Becker’s Hospital Review about the importance of social media in healthcare, particularly for physicians. With increasingly smaller windows for physician-patient interaction, Dr. Mehran suggests physicians embrace the social media trend as a way to begin or continue a patient’s visit prior to walking into the office.
“A lot of physicians … we’re very difficult when it comes to change because we learn things and we want to keep things the same, we don’t want to change that necessarily. When it comes to social media, it’s sort of brand new, especially for physicians that didn’t grow up with it. What social media does … [is] allow [physicians] to have a relationship with [their] patients before they walk in the door — they learn a little more about me, what type of person I am, what type of work I’m doing, how my patients respond to that work, the type of relationship I have with them outside of the office and what type of human I am … If [the patient] has visited my social media platform, they let their guard down a little bit, it [becomes] more of a friendly interaction … the encounters [between physicians and patients] nowadays are so short [that interacting on social media] makes them seem longer … and gives [patients] a sense of confidence in their physicians.”
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