Social Networking for GPs
Lately I’ve been absent from my blog due to the fact that I’m finishing my vocational program and therefore I’m having a work/study overload. But this was a VIP - Very Important Post, so here it goes.
During the last Portuguese National GP Meeting, that occurred in Vilamoura from March 18th to 21st, I and Tom Nolan, from doc2doc, organized a 90 minute workshop entitled Social Networking for General Practitioners and Trainees. This was the first time that Portuguese GPs had the opportunity to discuss and try some of the tools that web 2.0 brought to light during the last years.
Tom presenting the “Social network: what’s in it for GPs?”
The workshop main attractions were the social network platforms doc2doc and, of course, Twitter. Participants had the chance to endure on a live tweet discussion between me, @amcunningham, @brownleader and @JRBTrip who kindly accepted to be available on Twitter for 30 minutes on that morning. A lot of tweets were exchanged among Portugal (Vilamoura), UK and Australia during those moments, mainly regarding the use of Twitter by GPs, electronic communication between physicians and patients and also different working conditions for GPs. You can tweetsearch the discussion with the hashtag #26encg.
This conference was particularly interesting, due to high scientific interest, focusing General Practice/Family Medicine and Quality Assessment, but also regarding the fact that it was the first time that a GP conference in Portugal was being live tweeted. Carlos Martins, @mgfamiliarnet, was avidly following the stream during his daily GP activities 600 km away, in a health centre in Porto.
This was a starting kick for Portuguese GPs in social networking 2.0, we hope everyone feels enthusiastic about it.
And Vilamoura… see you next year!
