I know an elderly psychiatrist who used to do some small-time farming. I was always impressed with how many things he could buy without his wife objecting. Many of the items he purchased could have been considered, depending on one’s viewpoint, “tools” or “toys” (power tools, trucks, old tractors, etc.). There seemed to be two reasons he was able to do so. First, he had a great strategy. Anytime he bought something for himself, he either bought the same thing for his wife or bought her something equivalent. If he bought a Grand Cherokee, she got one, too. It must have been expensive, but it probably helped him to avoid years of marital discord and ultimately Dr. Phil telling him to “get real.” The second reason he got away with buying so much stuff was, as he told me, because “the tool always creates the job.” He loved all of these toys, and he had a special knack for always proving how useful each of them was because he inevitably would find the “need” that the tool would fulfill.

Is the social media craze similar to my psychiatrist friend’s farm tools? Do some of us just love technology so much that Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and now Buzz are becoming perceived necessities to justify our professional use of them? Are they actually useful, or are we just afraid that we will miss something by not jumping on the bandwagon?

I recently read a primary care physician’s response to a blog post. He made the point that he does not use social media, not even e-mail, to communicate with patients because he does not have to. Regardless of what he does, his waiting room is always full of patients, and his mailbox is always bursting with new career opportunities.

He makes a good point. And, at some level, he is probably right. One could probably easily spend many more years practicing clinical primary care as Dr. Luddite and never run out of work.

But, is that approach short-sighted? I think it is.

The challenge for physicians, regardless of specialty, is that we are very busy and already overwhelmed with time-consuming, unreimbursed communications with patients. We are very hesitant to do what may seem like the opening of yet more lines of communication. Things may get so out of control that we’ll need to hire Dr. Phil to tell our patients to “get real.” And, of course, we don’t want to do that.

The other issue is that the practice of medicine is so damned over-regulated that unless you work in a mega-medical system, it is nearly impossible to be compliant with all of the detailed regulations that exist. It’s difficult enough to navigate around HIPAA violation mine-fields as it is. Who wants to bother thinking about where social media fits into the picture?

Busyness combined with fear and burdensome regulations stifle our creativity and innovation in medicine. I believe that social media will in some way become vital adjunctive tools that we will use in medical practice. And, we may as well face the fact that our patients will increasingly expect our participation. We may not know how it’s all going to work in the coming years, but I think that those who write off advances in technology as meaningless time-wasting fads will ultimately be left behind, probably on their rotary-dial phones, on hold, waiting to talk to Dr. Phil.

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