How Carolyn Kingston Used the Internet Before and After Hip Replacement Surgery

Diana Cole told me, “The internet saved my life,” and recounted a story about using the internet to identify a bat bite and learn about rabies in bats, leading to an emergency room trip. She later introduced me to her sister, Carolyn Kingston, who attributed her successful outcome from hip replacement surgery to her use of the internet. I asked Carolyn about her general use of the internet for health, her specific use for her surgery, and the blog she started to record her surgery and recovery.

Lisa: When did you start using the internet for health information and why?

Carolyn: I’ve been using the internet for health information for years, mostly to supplement and clarify information I get from my doctor. For example, as a person who has had chronic colitis for many years, I explored a number of sites searching for alternative treatments that would help cut down or eliminate some of the strong medications used in traditional medicine. I found a book online with a holistic dietary approach, which I followed during flare-ups for a month or two at a time for several years with limited success. Ulcerative colitis is tricky because up till now doctors have no idea what causes it.

Lisa: Do you and Diana discuss your respective internet use?

Carolyn: Diana and I often discuss and share information about use of the internet for health related issues. Her experience with the bat bite is an example. My health-related searches on the internet are usually very targeted, and directed toward answering a specific question rather than broad, generalized browsing.

Lisa: What led up to the hip replacement surgery Diana told me about?

Carolyn: I first noticed discomfort in my right hip about 8 years ago. In the last few years X-rays and an MRI showed increased deterioration of the cartilage in the hip joint and an increasing narrowing of the space between the ball and socket of the hip – typical of degenerative osteoarthritis. The time to have hip surgery is determined by how it feels, not how it looks, so it is largely the patient’s decision. With regular low impact exercising, such as swimming, walking, yoga, and tai chi, and herbal remedies, such as Glucosamine Chondroitin and fish oil, I managed to keep going pretty comfortably until the last few months. Even then it was not as much chronic pain but lack of mobility and the ability to enjoy exercising that was the impetus to schedule the surgery.

Lisa: At what point did you start searching online?

Carolyn: In January 2010, right after making the appointment for surgery on April 7. I’d seen my orthopedic surgeon for the second time in December, looking for a medication stronger than Naproxen and Tylenol. He prescribed Tramadol and we discussed whether to have the surgery now. Basically it was left up to me – a wait and see how it goes situation. In my first appointment with him about a year before he described in detail the advantages of the newer anterior approach to hip replacement, that the entry was more toward the front of the hip resulting in less bleeding, no cutting of muscles, and faster recovery time. In addition titanium is now used for most of the replacements, so it lasts longer, up to 25-30 years.

Lisa: What information were you looking for?

Carolyn: My first internet search was to find out more about “anterior hip replacement” and there was lots of information out there, including medical websites describing all the advantages and testimonial blogs by patients. I found few negative testimonials about this approach to hip surgery. What I did not use the internet for was to look for alternatives to surgery, and there were many ads on sites I visited claiming various ways to avoid hip replacement. I also did not research surgeons online because I was fortunate to have an excellent surgeon whom I liked, as well as the positive testimony of a friend who’d had a very successful result with the same surgeon several months before.

Lisa: Diana told me that you learned things online that led to a good outcome: what were they and could you have learned them in other ways?

Carolyn: What I learned online was very helpful both pre- and post-surgery. I found sites that had lists of pre-op exercises, which I printed out and began doing faithfully 6 weeks before the surgery. I found checklists of how to prepare your home for post-op recovery. I searched Amazon for books and ordered two, plus a meditation tape on preparing for surgery recommended by my therapist. I could have found out these things through my health plan, but this was efficient and didn’t involve making an appointment. To satisfy my need for information I ordered online the 2010 version of John Hopkins paper on Arthritis and set a “Google Alert” on current media articles on hip replacements. Some of this information was useful for the short speech I gave in March to my local Toastmasters Club on “Making Medical Decisions.” Post-surgery I felt ready to watch a step-by-step video of how this particular surgery is performed. I was also interested in how long it would be to recover full muscle strength in the muscles of my right leg.

Lisa: Did you look for specialized information, such as concerns you had as a singer? Were these searches successful?

Carolyn: I googled the length of time post-surgical effects of general anesthesia and the effects of intubation on the singing voice. On that issue I did not find any helpful information.

Lisa: How has your experience influenced your attitude toward using the internet?

Carolyn: My attitude toward using the internet is very positive. I use it to educate myself and to find reassurance, but not for self-intervention. I am very wary of sites that make claims to heal you in X months or days. The internet is an amazing resource which I use daily for one thing or another and I am grateful for its existence.

Lisa: I saw the blog you started, Becoming Hip. Can you tell me why you started it and why you didn’t continue it? Have you read other health related blogs and, if so, did you find them helpful?

Carolyn: I started my blog partly to learn how to set one up but primarily to share my feelings and thoughts day-to-day about my upcoming surgery with friends and family. It was also a way to remember my mother who died last summer and who had a total of three hip replacement surgeries, the first in 1978. In those days the prosthesis didn’t last as long, necessitating a re-do of her first one 17 years later.

Lisa: Why you didn’t continue it?

Carolyn: Somehow I got in the habit of writing my entries longhand (something I am used to doing in my journal) and never switched over to writing on the computer. Post surgery I wrote mostly to record the rehabilitation progress I was making which will be useful in the likely event I have the other hip replaced. Your question, however, has prompted me to transcribe what I wrote over the last 6 months and I am posting them bit-by-bit on my blog.

Lisa: Have you read other health-related blogs, how did you find them, and did you find them helpful?

Carolyn: I did read a number of other blogs and found them of varying usefulness. Some were way too self indulgent, others were very informative and encouraging. Recently I was concerned about muscle tightness in my operated leg so I Googled “muscle tightness post hip replacement” and found a very helpful entry on an Orthopedic website. It re-assured me that muscle tightness often takes several months to resolve.

Lisa: Did you – or do you still – follow any of these blogs regularly?

Carolyn: No, I don’t follow any blogs regularly. I usually just Google a specific question.

Lisa: Did you show your blog or journal to your doctor? Did you talk to your doctor about your internet searches or ask for recommendations of websites?

Carolyn: No, I didn’t.

Lisa: What advice do you have for someone in your situation based on these experiences, both your internet research and your use of a journal and blog?

Carolyn: If you are a person who likes to have a full understanding of what you will be going through, the internet is a great resource. It can’t replace personal conversations with your doctor of others on your support team but can give you more understanding and greater peace of mind.

Interview with Dana Jennings, the World’s Most Famous Patient Blogger

Dana Jennings writes what is arguably the world’s most famous patient blog about his treatment for prostate cancer. Just to be clear, I don’t have any statistics about how many readers he and other patient bloggers have. I believe his blog is the most widely read and best-know patient blog because of the number of comments he receives and its prominent location in the New York Times Health section, itself widely read. ComScore found that more than 123 million Americans visited newspaper sites in May and the New York Times led online newspapers with more than 32 million visitors and 719 million pages viewed during May 2010.

As an avid reader of his blog and an admirer of his eloquence, I spoke to Dana on June 18, 2010 about why he started the blog, how he writes it, and how it has helped him through his prostate cancer.

Lisa: How did the idea of writing a blog first come up?
Dana: I have been a working journalist since 1980. In October 2008, I was working on my 6th book and having trouble writing because I was obsessing over having cancer. At the same time I couldn’t find what I wanted online about prostate cancer even though there is a lot of information out there. So I thought I could write about this. I wanted to give the topic a distinctive voice and be honest, not just about prostate cancer, but about cancer and about being ill. I was concerned about my family’s reaction, but I spoke to my wife and sons and they were fine about it. A colleague put me in touch with New York Times health blogger Tara Parker-Pope who responded positively to the idea. It happened quickly after that.

Lisa: What has been most interesting for you about the process?
Dana: The two most interesting things about it were the extent to which writing it gave me an opportunity to find out what I thought about different aspects of having cancer, and the reaction to my blog, which stunned me. I but didn’t expect so many men to respond that I was articulating things for them or women to respond that I was saying what they wanted their husbands to say.

Lisa: How many readers do you have?
Dana: I don’t really get a count of readers for each post but some, like My Brief Life as a Women, have had hundreds of thousands of views. And a few posts have over 600 comments. I knew my blog had become well-known when Whoopi Goldberg made fun of me on The View.

Lisa: Do you read all the comments?
Dana: I read most. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Tom Friedman gets hundreds of comments and I suspect he doesn’t read all his comments, but it’s a different type of writing. I am a big fan of the 2-3 sentence comment, but even the long ones I skim. When I read my blog comments, I see that they really like me.

Lisa: Are any comments helpful or supportive?
Dana: It is helpful knowing that I’ve been able to help people, that I made it easier for people to talk about and go through this process. I am happy to read the advice in comments but I’m a strong-minded person and have my own ideas. It cracks my wife and me up when people suggest crazy cancer treatments.

Lisa: Are there gender differences in who reads or comments on your blog?
Dana: More women read my blog than men. Men and women respond differently: women tend to be more insightful and understand the emotion I’m trying to convey in the blog while men are more focused on data: name, rank, serial number. Men are more emotionally stunted in our society and think they have to be tough.

Lisa: Have you shown your blog to your doctors?
Dana: My oncologists have looked at it off and on, also the radiation technicians. They appreciate what I have to say. But I don’t write for them because my obligation is to my readers and fellow cancer patients.

Lisa: Is your blog edited?
Dana: My primary job is as an editor, so my posts go through a few drafts and then Tara Parker-Pope reads them and she may have some edits or changes which I look at. Finally a copy editor reviews it.

Lisa: How does the New York Times promote your blog?
Dana: It appears on the Health page with my picture, sometime highlighted at the top. Some posts have appeared as a most emailed article, which itself increases visibility, just like when a book appears on the bestseller list.

Lisa: Do you read other patient blogs?
Dana: I don’t. I spend time reading every day, but I read the New York Times and I read books. I try not to lose myself on the Internet. I’m 52, a dinosaur from age of print, although my sons are amused that I blog.

Lisa: Can you offer any advise about reading other people’s blogs or starting your own solely based on your own experiences?
Dana: I really don’t because I had the benefit of working here at The Times. But, if someone is obsessed about their situation and wants to write, then they should go ahead. It’s a big ol’ Internet.

Online Consumer Health in Jordan: An Interview with Dana Mahadeen

I met Dana Mahadeen, an English Language Instructor at Balqaa Applied University in Salt, Jordan with a background in e-learning. We ended up chatting, not about e-learning, but about how people in Jordan use the Internet for health information. She told me that not all Jordanians use the Internet. Internet use is 18.2% of Jordanians as of March 2008 and 24.5% as of August 2009 according to a different source. I could find no data about use of the Internet for health. Dana told me about health Web sites in Jordan and her own experiences.

While there are health Web sites in Jordan, most are government-operated although there are some private sites. Some of the English language ones Dana knows are http://www.ncd.org.jo/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1, http://www.jfda.jo/en/default/, http://www.khcc.jo/, and http://www.moh.gov.jo/MOH/En/home.php. She said that there are other sites in Arabic, such as  http://www.6abib.com/, but questioned how accurate their information is. One of the Arabic ones she uses is http://www.sehha.com/. Mostly she relies on American sites like the Mayo Clinic. Dana said that she knew about the Arabic sites because she has a friend suffering from diabetes and cancer. She tries to keep up with the news about these diseases, to understand the conditions better, and to help her friend at the same time. She went on to say that she has used these sites for herself during her pregnancy and when her children are ill.

I asked Dana why she relies on Mayo Clinic’s website instead of the Jordanian ones. She responded, “It is very user-friendly and I guess I just like the site. I have also used WebMD.” I asked if she had heard of anyone writing a blog about their illness, to which Dana responded, “I can’t say I have, but I have heard of people writing about their weight loss.” She went on to say that obesity is a problem there, not to the extent of the problem in the US. They “are seeing more 10+ year old children getting heavier and heavier and I guess we are headed the way of the US. Don’t get me wrong, most Jordanian adults are a bit on the chubby side but not obese. It is a matter of food choices: Jordanian food is naturally rich and, well, fast food is quite popular.”

I asked if heart disease was common as a result of the rich food and Dana responded, “Strange that you should ask. My husband is a Cardiac Surgeon and he is very busy” (40% of deaths in Jordan are caused by cardiovascular diseases, according to Health Minister Nayef Fayez.) To my final question about her own health seeking behavior with a husband who is a doctor, Dana said, “I am always asking my husband questions and I am always looking online. I like to know as much as I can. The Internet is a great tool.”

Blogging for Health: Survey about Why People Blog about an Illness

Pam Ressler, RN, BSN, HN-BC, one of my students, and I are researching why people choose, or don’t choose, to start and maintain a blog about a health condition. We would appreciate your answers to these questions. We will publish the results of our study here as well. Please respond in a comment or email me.

If you have a blog:

When and why did you start your blog?
What do you see at the primary reason(s) you continue blogging?
How often do you typically post?
What types of feedback do you receive? How many comments do you typically get to each post?
Do you know how many unique visitors you have during a particular time period (say 2009)?
Do you do anything to promote your blog or attract new readers?
Do you use your real name in your blog?
Do you read other blogs by people with health issues and, if so, which and why?
Have you shown your blog to your doctor or other healthcare professional?

If you don’t blog:

Why didn’t you blog about your illness? Did you consider blogging about your illness?
What do you see as the primary reason(s) you didn’t blog about your illness?
If you have discussed your illness with individuals besides your healthcare team, how have you done so (phone, email, in-person support groups, discussion boards, etc.)?
Do you read other blogs by people with health issues and, if so, which and why?

If you know of someone who blogs about their health, please forward this to them or let us know how to contact the person.

How Celebrity Doctors Use their Online Presence to Communicate with Healthcare Consumers

Erin Dubich, a graduate student at Tufts, and I are doing a study about “celebrity” doctors who use their online presence to communicate with healthcare consumers.

Please help us by telling us which celebrity doctors you believe have an effective online presence and why: Dr. Gupta, Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Dr. Richard Besser, or another? We are interested in those who have Web sites, blogs, etc., unlike, say, Dr. Ruth, a celebrity doctor whose presence is not online.

The characteristics we are looking at are:

Basis of reputation (credentials, job, books, TV, etc.)
Website(s) featured on
Where seen besides website (TV, radio, books, syndicated column, etc.)
Topic(s) of advice/articles (general health, sexual health, etc.)
Type(s) of advice (ask the expert, interviews, etc.)
Why is the doctor an effective health communicator (timeliness, credibility, topics, reach to common concerns or fears, etc.)

If you have examples of celebrity doctors who you believe are not effective or exploit their fame or their position, we would like to hear that too.

Please post a comment or email me. We appreciate your help and will post our compiled results and conclusions.

Blogging for Fun and Profit – Or at Least for Validation and Insights

I had a great discussion today with a colleague about her insights on What’s the Right Thing to Say to Someone Who Is Ill? based on her professional and personal experiences. She validated my ideas and inspired me to take them in new directions. It also reminded me why I like to blog.  Recently I was a featured faculty blogger on the Tufts University home page and said, “As an academic, you have endless ideas but you don’t always have the time to pursue them. What I find the blog is great for is taking some of those ideas, fleshing them out, and posting them… Not only are they are there to go back to when time allows, but I get feedback from people who read my blog and write comments.”

What’s the Right Thing to Say to Someone Who Is Ill?

When I ran into Paul S. not knowing he had cancer, I barely recognized him and struggled with what to say. “What happened?” didn’t seem appropriate, although it was my initial reaction. I believe I said, “I barely recognized you,” which was true. I’ve been in many situations where I wasn’t sure what to say to someone who was ill or in distress; I wanted to be supportive but wasn’t sure what would be perceived as helpful.

I’ve been on the receiving end too; most recently when my father died and I remembering saying to myself many times, “I know he/she means well” when their words did not comfort me. I only once curtailed a conversation, when, within minutes after hearing about his death, a friend started telling me a long, involved story about a mutual friend’s father. I stopped her, said that I knew she meant to be supportive but I could not listen right now, and walked away.

People so often mean well but don’t know what to say. I asked Paul S. what he found helpful and he thought it was very dependent on personality. He describes himself as “a very logical, rational, controlled-emotions kind of person, so I hear comments such as you made as empathetic or at worst neutral. ‘Wow, Paul, you look like crap!’ ‘Darn right – I feel like crap.’ I actually like that.  But I have known other people who are really bothered by exactly that type of observation. They want sympathy and understanding, but not observation, if you get my distinction. A worried LOOK, and an inquiry about how they are feeling, seems to be what they need. Which I value too. So I guess that’s the safe thing to do.”

When I told Paul about my experience with the friend who I walked away from, he understood my reaction and said, “What I did not want to hear is what you heard: somebody else’s story, not really relevant, and depressing. That’s indicative of a person who isn’t able to listen.” Of course, I was the one who was actually there and don’t think that the person couldn’t listen, but didn’t know what to say and felt moved to say something. The opportunities for mismatch between what one person says and the other person needs are abundant!

The difficulties are compounded by the distinction between advice and information, as Paul articulated, “The other thing I did not want to hear is advice about what I should do or not do – I’m getting the best care available, and I’m pretty competent to take care of myself. But then unsolicited advice is almost never welcome, right? What I DID appreciate, however, was INFORMATION. I didn’t include this in my story, but when I shared my situation with a friend at church, he reported that his mother had experienced something similar and had done extensive research on the web regarding Cisplatin and hearing loss. At my request, he contacted his mother who then e-mailed me several specific web links to good information sites. THAT interaction spurred me to do more research than I had done before.”

When I ran into Paul, my immediate thought was not to offer meals or rides, but sometimes this is the most helpful thing one can say. Paul agrees,”The other thing that was nice, though I didn’t really need it, was offers of help, such as rides to chemo or offers to bring food or visit. I think it’s my personal style to not want or need much of that – I was able to drive the whole time, and didn’t want to put somebody to a lot of trouble; my taste buds and my appetite were shot, plus my partner was taking care of my food needs; and I just wanted to be left alone to vegetate in front of the TV when I felt bad, and not feel like I needed to keep up a conversation or be nice. But I’ve known other people – my (now former) partner is one – who in a similar situation would want almost around-theclock company and help. So it’s good to ask and offer help, as long as you’re prepared to accept ‘thanks, but no thanks’.”

While Paul doesn’t think he is typical, it may be that no one really is in times of need. Which, of course, helps one to appreciate the people who do say or offer exactly what you need at that moment.
Paul also deal with the the common problem of how to keep people informed through email, which is a way of reaching out to people as well and a way of avoiding having the same conversation repeatedly. Paul recounted his experience, “On a closely related topic, something I did that had a surprising and wonderful result: When I entered the hospital, I did a broadcast e-mail to a ton of friends, advising them of the immediate situation and inviting them to opt in to periodic e-mail updates. More than 60 people opted in! Sending those broadcasts helped me feel connected, and I often got lots of replies. But the most surprising thing that kept happening was that they THANKED me for keeping them posted. That blew me away. It still does a year later. True friends WANT to know, want to share the burden. Too many people feel ashamed or embarrassed or unimportant, and they miss this incredible opportunity to strengthen relationships by sharing their situations. Sure, there are folks who complain too much, so it can go the wrong way. My messages were factual and hopeful, even when I felt like crap, and that seemed to inspire a lot of people, which in turn made me feel that something good was coming out of this not-so-good time. I don’t know whether this fits into what you’re trying to do, but I would sure encourage people who find themselves in similar situations to reach out and stay in touch.” There are Web sites for exactly this purpose, but email is certainly simple and, in this case, effective. There are also many people who blog their illness; one of the most moving that I read was NPR journalist Leroy Siever’s My Cancer.

Cereal and the Internet or Can’t I Eat My Breakfast without Going Online?

The four breakfast cereal boxes sitting on my kitchen counter all have urls to promote healthy eating. Not having noticed that before, I checked if all food packing has urls now, and discovered that many do, but they are primarily, in my small sampling, to enter contests, get recipes, or go to the corporate website. While some of the cereal packages similarly have urls for recipes and the like as well, what I was interested in was the healthy eating information.

Starting with my personal favorite, the Quaker Oats oatmeal package told me that it is one of the “over 250 smart choices made easy from Pepsi Co.” at smartspot.com. There I learned about “energy balance”, why eating breakfast is healthy, and found a link to The Breakfast Research Institute, which is sponsored by Quaker and Tropicana. There, the Breakfast Calculator told me that my breakfast of choice, while higher in calories than a doughnut and cup of coffee, is also significantly more nutritious and brings me closer to meeting my daily recommended nutrition requirements. I could compare my breakfast to their pre-set breakfasts and even tweak mine to increase the nutritional value. And, for my breakfast entertainment, there were podcasts!

After that, I barely wanted to check the other sites out but did out of curiosity. Corn Chex had wholegrainnation.com, where I took a multiple choice quiz about whole grains. Honey Nut Cheerios offered eatbetteramerica.com (which wholegrainnation.com is part of), where I found lots of recipes, a discussion forum, a blog, and more. The blog entries I read all linked to “healthified” recipes in which some ingredients are replaced with alternatives so the result is “as yummy” but “better-for-you”. Finally, Raisin Bran has kelloggsnutrition.com, where “master-moms” taught me how to “snacktivate”.

If I was creating a website that a cereal box led to, based on my perusal of these sites, I would:

• think of common misspellings for my url and buy the domains – typing in kelloggnutrition.com with one “g”, as I first did, should still lead to the right website
• make sure that my discussion forums were not stale (no pun intended) – topics from over a month ago would not be tagged as new
• determine if there is a pedagogical or branding advantage to coining my own terms, such as “healthified” and “snacktivate”
• use the simplicity of cereal – it is generally eaten for breakfast in a bowl with milk – as a guiding principle rather than developing a complex or overwhelming site
• most of all, I would promote healthy eating for breakfast through advice that could be immediately used

The sites I looked at collectively offered advice on all aspects of diet and fitness, not just breakfast, through articles, tests, tools, forums, podcasts, and ask the expert, oriented primarily to parents but with sections for professionals, educators, and children. But what is the likelihood that someone will peruse this abundance of  information and implement significant lifestyle changes before rushing off to school or work?

Ultimately, I preferred the Breakfast Research Institute. It just focused on breakfast. It was the only site that provided me with immediately useful and actionable advice: that adding a piece of fruit to my current breakfast of oatmeal would give me a healthier start to my day. And it confirmed what I already knew, although affirmation is always beneficial: that my current breakfast is far superior nutritionally to coffee and a doughnut.

Ten Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes To Be a More Connected Health Professional

You need a break and, instead of heading to the coffee pot, take 10 minutes to follow one of these 10 suggestions to be more connected and better at communicating health messages:

1. Become a social networker: Take your pick, LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo, … Create a profile, including a picture, and invite some colleagues. If you search, you’ll find many of them already there. (You can connect to me!)
2. Try twitter: Join twitter and try out micro-blogging. Invite some colleagues or find some who are already there. Try following me (I am a sporadic user but I post health links occasionally) or try BBC Health.
3. Read a blog: Health blogs range from very professional and constantly updated to navel-gazing ones that were last posted in over a year ago. I recommend you start with Well, Tara Parker-Pope’s health blog at the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog, Consumer Report’s Health Blog, or Health 2.0. For contrast, try Leroy Sievers’ NPR blog or one of WebMD’s blogs. Not feeling overwhelmed yet? Do a search on “health blogs” or even “health blog directories” and I guarantee you will be suffering from information overload. Now comment on a blog. Not only do bloggers like to know you read a post, but you undoubtedly have something to contribute. After all, if you wrote a blog post, wouldn’t you like to know what your readers think? Be a producer, not just a consumer!
4. Create a blog: You knew this was coming! But only do it if you can commit to posting regularly. If you think you can only post sporadically, start one with a few colleagues. I recommend wordpress but there are many other blogging tools.
5. Create a community: try ning and set up an online community about your health specialty. First search to see what else is there. If you find some, check to see how many members they have and the date of the latest site activity.
   
6. Do a search on a health topic: Select a topic of interest to you professionally and do a search. Look at the number of results first. Next look to see if there are sponsored links. Finally, look at the first 10 results and see if you think they represent your topic well. If your work isn’t there, come up with a plan for greater visibility. (If you don’t know what SEO stands for, then at least become conversant with it.)
7. Learn how information spreads: Post an article you like (or wrote) to digg, mixx, StumbleUpon, or reddit. Or post a picture to Flickr or a video to YouTube. If you aren’t ready to post, then participate by commenting on or voting on it.
8. Use Wikipedia: Have you read Wikipedia’s entry on your health specialty? Read it and enhance it. If there isn’t one there, create it. There are other wikis out there too – for instance, you might want to add your name to the list of Health 2.0 people – and see who else is on it.
9. Connect with a person: Email a colleague about something you read or are thinking about. Or pick up the phone. Or even invite someone you’ve been meaning to talk to out for coffee. (See, you get your coffee break after all.)
10. Just for fun: What would it take for you to be the first health specialist on TechCult’s Top 100 Web Celebrities list – besides a blog (see #4) and funky hair?

Finally, think of your own idea for a 10 minute activity that can improve your health communication skills and post it as a comment below so others can benefit.

Thanks to the students in Emerson College’s Summer Institute for Social Marketing and Health Communication who inspired this post following my lecture on New Technologies for Health Communication.

Seven Habits of Highly Connected People by Stephen Downes, Guest Contributor

Stephen Downes was kind enough to allow me to publish this here. I was especially interested in it because FranklinCovey was one of my clients when I worked at EDS. Watch for a version of this to appear in eLearn Magazine later this month!

With apologies – and all due credit – to Stephen Covey.

1. Be Reactive

There’s a lot of talk about user-generated content on the web. That’s great. But if publishing your own stuff comes at the expense of reading, and commenting on, other people’s stuff, that’s not so great.

The first thing any connected person should be is receptive. Whether on a discussion forum, mailing list, or in a blogging community or gaming site, it is important to spend some time listening and getting the lay of the land.

Then, your forays into creating content should be as reactions to other people’s points of view. This will ensure, first of all, that they read your comment, and second, that your post is relevant to the discussion at hand.

Posting, after all, isn’t about airing your own views. It’s about connecting, and the best way to connect is to clearly draw the link between their content, and yours.

2. Go With The Flow

We all know those people in our online community who are out to Prove Something, to Get Things Done, or to Market Themselves.

These are people we tend to avoid. Because no matter what the topic of discussion, they’ll weigh in with their pet project, peeve or talking point.

When connecting online, it is more important to find the places you can add value rather than to pursue a particular goal or objective. The web is a fast-changing medium, and you need to adapt to fit the needs of the moment, rather than to be driving it forward along a specific agenda.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have any goals or principles for yourself. You should; that’s what will inform your participation. It’s just a reminder that your goals are not the same as other people’s goals, and therefore that your online participation needs to respect that fact.

3. Connection Comes First

People talk about not having time for email, of not having time for blogs. Sometimes they even talk about working without an internet connection.

It’s good to take a break and go out camping, or to the club, or whatever. But the idea of replacing your online connecting with busy-work is mistaken.

In almost all fields, connecting with others online is the work. The papers you write, the memos your read and toss – all these have to do with connecting with people. Even if you work with your hands, making cabinets or rebuilding engines, all your contacts with customers and suppliers are about connecting with people.

If you don’t have enough time for reading email, writing blog posts, or posting discussion lists, ask yourself what other activities you are doing that are cutting in to your time. These are the things that are often less efficient uses of your time.

If you are spending time in meetings, spending time traveling or commuting to work, spending time reading books and magazines, spending time telephoning people (or worse, on hold, or playing phone tag) then you are wasting time that you could be spending connecting to people online.

If you make connecting a priority, you can take that walk in the forest of vacation in Cadiz without feeling you are not caught up.

4. Share

We’re all heard the advice to “think win-win”. Forget that advice. If you follow that advice, you will always be looking at things and saying, “what’s in it for me?” That’s exactly the wrong attitude to have in a connected world.

The way to function in a connected world is to share without thinking about what you will get in return. It is to share without worrying about so-called “free-riders” or people taking advantage of your work.

In a connected world, you want to be needed and wanted. This will, over time, cause resources to be sent to you, not as a reward for some piece of work, but because people will want to send you stuff to help you to be even more valuable to them.

When you share, people are more willing to share with you. In a networked world, this gives you access to more than you could ever produce or buy by yourself. By sharing, you increase your own capacity, which increases your marketability.

5. RTFM

RTFM stands for ‘Read The Fine Manual’ (or some variant thereof) and is one of the primary rules of conduct on the internet.

What it means, basically, is that people should make the effort to learn for themselves before seeking instruction from others.

Almost everything a person could need to know has been recorded somewhere online (by people who are sharing their knowledge freely). Taking the time and effort to look at this work is not merely respectful, it demonstrates a certain degree of competence and self-reliance.

For example, if your software fails to install, instead of calling customer service or posting a note on a bulletin board, copy the error message into the Google search field and look for answers. Almost every software error has been encountered (and documented) by someone before you.

Finally, when you do ask for help, you can state what you’ve read and tried, and why it didn’t work. This saves people from giving you advice you don’t need, and helps them focus on what’s unique about your problem.

6. Cooperate

Offline people collaborate. They join teams, share goals, and work together. Everybody works in the same place, thy use the same tools, and have the same underlying vision of the project or organization.

Online, people cooperate. They network. Each has his or her own goals and objectives, but what joins the whole is a web of protocols and communications. People contribute their own parts, created (as they say in open source programming) to ‘satisfy their own itch’.

This is probably the consequence of distance. Online, it is not possible to enforce your will or (beyond a limited extend) to get your way by shouting and intimidation. This means that online communications are much more voluntary than offline communications. And successful online connectors recognize this.

To cooperate, it is necessary to know the protocols. These are not rules – anybody can break them. But they establish the basis for communication. Protocols exist in all facets of online communications, from the technologies that connect software (like TCP/IP and HTML) to the ways people talk with each other (like netiquette and emoticons).

7. Be Yourself

What makes online communication work is the realization that, at the other end of that lifeless terminal, is a living and breathing human being.

The only way to enable people to understand you is to allow them to sympathize with you, to get to know you, to feel empathy for you. Comprehension has as much to do with feeling as it does with cognition.

People who use online communications ‘only for business’ – or worse, feel that other people shouldn’t be posting cat photos or playing Scrabble on Facebook – are employing only a small part of the communications capacity of the internet.

Learning and communicating are not merely acts of sending content over a wire. They are about engaging in (what Wittgenstein called) a ‘Way of Life’. Having a cat is as important for a physicist as having an advanced research lab. These common everyday things form the mental structure on which we hang the highly theoretical structure.

The idea behind ‘being yourself’ is not that you have some sort of offline life (though you may). Rather, it’s a recognition that your online life encompasses the many different facets of your life, and that it is important that these facets all be represented and work together.

Using a Blog to Aid Reflection (or Would Thomas Jefferson Write a Blog?)

Thomas Jefferson said, “One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.” Robert Davison, in Learning through Blogging: Graduate Student Experiences, finds that blogs help his students at City University of Hong Kong reflect on what they are learning and on the applicability of it to their jobs. He has them blog both in class and on their own. I think the very prolific Thomas Jefferson would have been an active blogger (although not Twitter or other social networking tools), and, like Robert’s students and me, would have found it aided reflection.

The Blog as a Cognitive Prosthetic Device

Ron Baecker has a research project to find “powerful and flexible electronic cognitive aids… to help people, including individuals who are aging and who have cognitive impairments, carry out activities of daily living”. Writing about ideas in a blog serves as an ideal “cognitive prosthesis” for me, with advantages over other techniques that include the ease of soliciting feedback. While corporate blogs are largely communication and marketing vehicles, there are many personal blogs in which people reveal details of their lives – perhaps largely as an aid to memory or an indicator of progress or achievement.

Donald Trump: Meet Katie Gibbs

Katie Gibbs, also known as Katharine Gibbs School or Gibbs College, is closing in Boston when the current students graduate. The school, founded in 1911, started off as a finishing school for women who were entering the working world. The original focus was on office skills, but other programs such as digital media were added in recent years. Before Katie Gibbs goes away, I have an idea for its resurrection, and there couldn’t be a better savior.

Donald Trump has a blog now, and writes in it about topical issues such as how a man “can get migraines, feel less satisfied with his overall life, and even get clinically depressed” if his wife earns a larger salary. This particular post includes a link to research and advice, including the concluding “if you still can’t deal with it, then go out and get a better job.”

While the blog states that there are other contributors, this particular one was posted by Donald Trump. I have trouble imagining him writing this himself. Does he go through the process of having an idea, jotting down a few notes, running the idea by a colleague, checking for grammatical errors – it’s not that I think he’s lazy, it’s just that I imagine more likely that there is a staff tasked with posting interesting blog entries, possibly based on his initial idea, or, more likely running a few ideas by him and scurrying off to write up the ones he doesn’t grunt at.

But who are these employees? Here’s my idea: Donald Trump could make Katie Gibbs a new school within Trump University. Most universities have multiple schools within them; Harvard University has the Medical School, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, etc. This new online school could teach the skills needed to help CEOs succeed – not teach the CEOs, but teach their assistants, like the original Katie Gibbs did. There would be “Blogging 101” to teach how to write blog posts that make your boss sound like an insightful person, “Inbox Management”, and the other skills necessary to survive today. Since so many involve technology, how perfect that the school will be online.

Would Agatha Christie Write a Blog if She Were Still Alive?

George F. Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, wrote in his blog about the process of using a blog to hone and get feedback on ideas, which he called “Social Sigma” (and I commented sounded too close to “Social Stigma”). I loved his notion of using feedback to perfect something, be it an idea or a product.

My favorite writer, Agatha Christie, wrote a few short stories that seemed to be the basis, with modifications, for novels. Thinking about that made me wonder if Agatha Christie would blog if she were alive today. If so, what would she say? Would she use the wisdom of crowds to solicit or get feedback on her ideas?