Social Media and Building an Academic Community

The digital world gives us previously unimaginable flexibility when it comes to physician career development. You may have considered how you can see patients by telemedicine from home, or read EEGs on the beach in Hawaii. For me, it has let me build an academic career in a very non-academic way.

After residency, I was faced with a decision: take a faculty position at a university – which had always been my plan in my long MD-PhD career – or work at a local community hospital for significantly higher pay.

All of my mentors – all of them academic – told me to stay in academia. A pediatrician said that when you see one patient, you help one person – which is great. But if you train another person to see patients, then you’ve helped more people. If you teach many people, if you change education, if you discover a treatment at the bench, then your circle of influence widens, until you affect innumerable patients.

She implied that the only way to change the world as a physician is through academia.

For a variety of family reasons, I took the position at the community hospital, thinking I would likely return to academia in time. What I am finding, however, is that the world of social media and the digital community gives me many of the benefits of academia.  

Through the podcasts I make for the Journal of Child Neurology, I have made amazing connections and have found collaborators for projects I am passionate about. Through the Facebook Women Neurologists Group, I can learn about opportunities for scholarship like the American Academy of Neurology leadership programs. Instead of weekly Grand Rounds I can follow national neuroimmunology webinars, or gather CME from #NeuroTwitter.

I found a love for research in the history of women and underrepresented minorities in neurology and medicine, and have given virtual Grand Rounds all over the country. I made a connection – through Twitter – with Zach London of the University of Michigan, and made a card game featuring 12 impressive women in neurology: www.EndowedChairs.com.

You can publish papers, present posters, and even be an editor-in-chief of a journal (I am) without being in academia. You can be on the board of a professional society (I am). I do have to be self-motivated; I do academic work because I love it and because I want to change the world, not because I want to get promoted to professor. To be honest, doesn’t everyone do this for love anyway? 

It may not be for everyone; but it is incredible to be able to build the career you want through the world of digital education.

Have you built academic connections through social media? What collaborations have you created?