Friday, August 5, 2011

The (FM) Revolution Will be Tweeted!

If you're in medicine and on twitter and haven't come across the #FMRevolution hashtag, you must be, like the Geico commercial says, living under a rock. Since March 2011, Family Medicine has been taking the twitterverse by storm. What first started as the "Family Medicine T-shirt Revolution" at a California Family Medicine summit in 2010 has now turned into a fulfledged campaign to debunk misconceptions about the specialty, dispel misgivings about pursuing the field and to advocate for primary care as a cost-effective specialty with proven results in improving health outcomes . The revolution has been rallying physicians, residents and students nationwide to the cause.


Leading the battalion of revolutionaries are @drmikesevilla, @familydocwonk, @berniemd31 @richmondDoc. These docs and many others tweet daily on their private practice experiences, medical education, the use of new technologies/social media in their practice. They tweet from conferences, from their lunch breaks and even while boarding flights to speaking engagements. They keep us informed with the latest news in the field.

Their presence on twitter has made #FMRevolution a top trending topic for those of us in health and social media and has made it one of the most (if not THE most) visible specialties in social media to date.  In the twittersphere, family medicine is not the dreaded 6-week mandatory rotation the MS4 is glad to be over with nor is it the often jeered at, unglamorous lower rung cousin of more "prestigious" specialties. No, on Twitter, Family Medicine is a vibrant community of leaders and innovators, great teachers and mentors setting the pace for the future of medicine.

I applaud the physicians who have taken the helm with the #FMRevolution as they make strides for family medicine and set great examples for us young primary care physicians.

Click here for more on origins and be a part of FMRevolution!

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