Social Media Makes Plastic Surgery Decision Making Simpler
Businesses all around the globe are trying to figure out how best to
make use of social networking to further their financial goals and enhance
customer service. Though social media has definitely found its niche,
businesses are still struggling to figure out how to use it best. In the
medical sector, this hasn’t been easy. The special legalities of doing business
as a medical practitioner create convoluted questions about what’s okay and
what’s not in social media. But nonetheless, doctors are starting to make an
appearance on Facebook and Twitter, trying to see what works and what doesn’t.
As doctors experiment more and more with social media, there are
several themes emerging that seem to provide some direction to doctors who are
trying to decide whether or not to try social media for their clinic. Patients
are able to get questions answered via Facebook, for example, and surgeons are
able to market some of the latest surgical procedures to their existing
clients. Surgeons who use social media are able to better inform their patients
and make sure they receive detailed information about the procedures they’ve
signed up for. This is important given that many patients feel as though their
questions weren’t answered by their physician prior to surgery or they didn’t
receive all the information they needed to feel fully comfortable with the
procedure.
The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
recently released survey results demonstrating that 42% of patients have
received information about facial plastic surgeries from online social
networking web sites. Doctors have mixed feelings about these results. Some
doctors realize that social media could help enhance patient communications and
patient care, while others feel that the topic of plastic surgery is not
appropriate for social networking sites. According to this view, patients should
not be making decisions off of information gleaned from a resource as
unreliable as Facebook.
Social media has opened up a whole new dialogue between doctors and
patients, which has, for the most part, been positive for both sides. Open
communication and feedback can be helpful for quality improvement and to
encourage a better relationship between a doctor and his or her patients. And
prospective patients can get a feel for a particular clinic by simply joining
the online community and seeing what the buzz is about. If the buzz is mostly
negative, prospective patients can find a different surgeon.
Though the social media market is still evolving and plastic surgeons
are still trying to find their place in the web, plastic surgery patients have
definitely found benefit from using social media as a tool because it provides
much-needed education in an informal and yet personal setting. And plastic
surgeons are able to learn more about the patients they serve, which can help
them make important changes to serve them even better. Though the profits
directly attributable to social media so far have not been remarkable, indirect
marketing could be substantial. As patients find it easier to develop a
relationship with their doctor via social networking, word-of-mouth marketing
may increase demonstrating a more
obvious connection between profits and social networking.
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