I was listening to a podcast of a recent sermon from Matt Chandler, Teaching Pastor at the Village Church in the Dallas/FTW area, and he brought up an interesting concept. He was speaking on “A Call to Pray,” and here is what he says:
My hope is to try to move us a little bit away from discipline and into delight. Because I think the best motivator out there isn’t discipline, but rather it’s delight. If you delight in something, you will be far more apt to be disciplined at something rather than just trying to create discipline in your life in the hope that it will bring about delight. If you love something, if you love doing something, you’re much more apt to do it and actually build things into your life that enable and empower it. If you don’t delight in it, then regardless of what kind of discipline you put in place, you’re going to stumble, fall, fail and give up.
Maybe we have been going about social media all wrong in hospitals? Maybe we keep trying to put programs, infrastructure, and guidelines (“discipline”) in place to make social media successful.
Maybe we should spend our time finding those who want to connect with patients in a new way, those who feel emerging technologies should be a focal point (“delight”), and use those resources and people for advancing ways we connect with employees, physicians, and patients.
I am not saying we should not have policies, guidelines, training, etc… but we do need to find those who really understand the goals and missions we are trying to advance with social media.
Thoughts
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Interesting piece here, Reed.
It’s a tough balancing act for an industry that requires a focus on regulation at all times, and yet benefits so greatly from sharing stories and connecting people. It would certainly be of great benefit for healthcare facilities to seek out people that are already seeing the utility of social media in their personal lives or at past professions. Social Media, fortunately, has a growing number of evangelists. 🙂
Cheers
Jason Boies
Radian6 Community
I agree… I do think we need to always have a focus on HIPAA, Security, etc… but I do think we are allowing these type issues to muddy up our strategy. Of course as times changes…well times change. I just hope we can make an impact now around the idea of community and not wait for the public to dictate how. Thanks for the comment!
I’m increasingly of the mindset that my resources are best spent empowering those who want to do it instead of trying to convince those who don’t.
Delight comes from wanting to do something.
When skeptics see enough success, they’ll want to do it, too.
Great piece. I’m a believer in doing what you love and then everything falls into place. I took delight in the health internships I was involved with and it showed. When it comes to using social media within the health industry, it’s a slippery slope due to HIPAA, but I do wish the lines were open to allow more employees who work in health institutions be free to use it while on the job (when it’s appropriate). I’ve seen many nurses, physicians, administrators tweet or blog about certain health topics and it draws the community to learn more. Being on social media is really about being a story teller and could even be considered a ministry. Mayo Clinic is a great example of how they are using social media, but it’s a medium that’s a work in progress (and so is the health care industry).