Let me start here.
We physicians don’t get a lot of points for play (and Play’s cousin – Creativity) within the practice of medicine.
Moms don’t bring their 5 year old son in with severe strep throat to be placed on an antibiotic that hasn’t been used before; They are coming in for the tried-and-true.
We don’t order MRIs of the knee for curiosity, or just for the joy of it.
And we certainly don’t not order EKGs for chest pain as an experiment for the day!
Much of our job is to have a very good understanding of the standard of care within our area of expertise , and then apply the appropriate protocols, diagnostic approaches, and treatment plans within that area.
It’s what we do.
(Don’t get me wrong, In this discussion, I’m not referring to the type of play and creativity that comes after mastery of a given area. I’m deeply aware of the role of creativity an experienced pediatrician uses to look in a resistance six-year-old throat. I know the difference between a good plastic surgeon and a great one will often lay within their creative and aesthetic sense, and certainly nearly every breakthrough in medicine at one point required an openness two new approaches and playing with new ideas. These aspects of play and creativity come after mastery of the basics, not before. Here my focus has more to do with the limitations placed on play and creativity with such things as protocols and standard of care medicine).
For the most part the role of play and creativity is discouraged in medical school, and then subsequently beaten out of a physician during internship and residency.
I suspect this cautious approach of play and creativity is why most physicians who engage social media on twitter have 150 followers, whereas there is a cadre of twenty-something YouTube Beauty Bloggers who have 100,000 followers and who are making $ 1/2 million a year doing it!
It’s because they understand that the bread-and-butter of social media is creativity and play.
So here’s some good news for all of you closet physician-creative’s out there.
In social media, playing with ideas or tools, or coming up with creative approaches or techniques, isn’t just an opportunity, it’s a necessity.
Here’s my example.
I will occasionally tweet out a photo (or even sometimes a video) of my cat on my primary Twitter account.
A playful Tweet with a photo of my cat, Olivier.
I recognize this doesn’t have the same direct impact as tweeting out a link two a medical journal article does.
And I certainly don’t do this for click bait, (although as a general rule tweets with photos will have up to 300% more engagement).
Instead I do it because it forces me to engage Twitter creatively.
- How can I take a nice photo of my cat and related to a healthcare subject I’m thinking of?
- Can I take a series of 4 photos of my cat (4 is the number of photos you can post in one tweet) and create a story that’s pertinent to my topic of interest?
- How can I best employ 200 characters, 30 or 40 words, to get through a concept in conjunction with these photos?
- What will happen if I use hashtag cats (#cats) with hashtag diabetes (#diabetes) and hashtag obesity (#obesity)?
These they all seem quite silly questions, but they’re not.
They are actually playful questions, and that’s the point.
It’s in this playful mindset where I begin to learn what Twitter and other forms of social media can really do.
It’s here, within this mindset of experimentation, that I develop the mastery of the tools of the trade of social media.
And it’s at that point where I am able to apply social media to my mission, my deep work, my purpose, my ikigai.
Good luck. Enjoy playing and creating.