Blog Assignment #10

The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a blog as "a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments, and often hyperlinks provided by the writer." Blogging is a useful tool to get the average person's voice heard. Anyone can write a blog, making free speech from the First Amendment even more accessible.

I believe bloggers should only post their comments about a topic if that thought is relevant and well thought out. As Jason Falls said, you can get a lot of knowledge from the right blogs and you will become a better professional faster. If a blogger writes even the most non-sense, irrelevant things, I think it hurts the whole blogging concept.

There are a lot of crazy and stupid people out there and obviously, some of them are writing blogs. That's why you have to be aware you can't believe everything a blog says. People can write blogs whether the topic is the cure of cancer or humiliation 101.  Giving the power to publish to anyone is a really sensitive thing to do because people can involve themselves in libel acts, providing false claims. People or company's reputations can touch the ground with just a click of a button. So yes, of course it can create problems.

Regarding what I've learned, it really impacts me that hospitals are using Social Media the way they are. Only 12.54% of hospitals are in this trend, making them the exception, not the rule.

I think it's amazing how hospitals use SNS to improve customer service, to provide community opportunities for patients sharing and support, and to refer physicians in an interface/database setting. Paul Levy's story surprised me a lot. I think more hospitals CEOs should copy his technique. Other hospital stories such as the Sutter Eden Medical, Georgetown Community Hospital and the Mayo Clinic are great. They give people hope and other hospital should take notes from them as well.

Communication technologies have impacted my life a great deal. Especially, the cell phone. I spend a lot of my day sending or answering texts and emails, talking to someone, checking the calendar, enabling or disabling alarms and surfing the Internet. I think this relates to the Media System Dependency theory because the more media I have, the more dependant I am of it.

I take my cell phone everywhere I go and if I can't find it for a few minutes I'll start freaking out. It has a lot of valuable information I need in a daily basis and makes me available 24/7, which makes it kind of like a pact with the devil, as we discussed in class.

Have a good Summer =)

Blog Assignment #9

I think it's amazing how the voice function alone of the cell phone helps to coordinate our lives while on the run. It's hard for me to imagine how life was before cell phones and how people couldn't take advantage of time as they do now. What if you wanted to make a call to a business, which you can only make it in business hours, and if you were not at home during business hours you weren't able to call them.

Cell phones are such useful tools. If plans change you can let someone else know on time. For example, once I was going to have lunch with a friend after class at 12:15. She was at her place and by 12:05 she was going to leave in order to pick me up on campus. My class finished early and I called her to let her know I was out already. She said she would be on her way. She was able to know I got out early because I called her, without that call I would have had to wait, and I would have wasted my time waiting.

Along with the cell phone, another type of etiquette appeared, the cell phone etiquette. While I'm at church, class, a theater, or closed, silent space I don't answer calls because I think it's rude for everyone else. I also put my cell phone in silent mode when I am in those kinds of places because I don't want to interrupt what is going on.

I think cell phones have impacted face-to-face communication in both good, and bad ways. Some people may plan a face-to-face interaction by phone, but some other people might only have the interaction by phone and never get together.

Cell phones let you be in contact with everyone more easily. You can organize plans, maintain contact with people that are in different states or even make long distance calls. Long distance calls are especially important for me because I am from Panama and I can stay in touch with my family and friends that way. The not so good part is that I am available 24/7 and if a friend feels like calling me at 5:00a.m. she/he is able to. 

Blog Assignment #8

Certainly, the Internet, social media and mobile phones made health information more accessible to the public. The biggest shift the Internet has brought to our society is E-patients. They are creating a new healthcare environment. What's on the Internet is not always true, that's why this shift is not leading towards a good path when people auto medicate themselves.

In my family, we are not really E-patients. If we feel sick we just simply try to rest and take pills. If that doesn't work we would call or visit our doctor. Going to a medical consultation in Panama is not expensive.

My grandfather from my mom's side is the only grandparent who's still alive. He's 90 and he is in perfect conditions. He is obviously not a fan of technology and he doesn't even have a clue on how to use the Internet.

My sister is a doctor. So, every time we have a medical concern, we just ask here what we might have. We rely more on our doctor's opinion because we know we can't trust everything that's online.

According to the Journal of Medical Internet Research:

"The quality of information on the Internet is paramount: accurate relevant information is beneficial, while inaccurate information is harmful. Physicians appear to acquiesce to clinically-inappropriate requests generated by information from the Internet, either for fear of damaging the physician-patient relationship or because of the negative effect on time efficiency of not doing so. A minority of physicians feels challenged by patients bringing health information to the visit; reasons for this require further research.

Views About Patient Responses to the Internet

Eighty-five percent of all respondents had experienced an occasion when a patient brought information from the Internet to a visit. For most physicians this is still a relatively-rare event; 59% of respondents stated that less than one fifth of their patients had done this. 87% of physicians perceived their patients as being concerned about the quality of information on the Internet, and 84% of respondents rated their patients as only fair or poor (rather than good, very good, or excellent) at appraising the quality of information on a Web site ."

Here's a link to a video that talks about e-Patients.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ZrWSmQxcU