Hello again everyone and welcome back to Lablogatory!
If you read my post last time, I talked about preserving integrity and delivery of our professional duty as laboratorians in the face of both overwhelming pandemic demands as well as working to advocate for our field as more people realize each day what goes into every single lab result around the world. A run on sentence and a heavy discussion—and it was just in time to celebrate Lab Week 2020!
This time let’s expand on the second topic a bit. Advocacy in our profession and spotlighting our critical roles as pathologists and medical laboratory scientists. As much as you or I might agree that this is proof positive, just from looking at the regular old news media this year, it’s not so easy. But something that’s been quietly creeping higher and higher on the Lab-Med radar this past year or so is now growing faster than it ever has before: Social Media.
The medium you disseminate information on also translates a message about the author/speaker. For me, I was not only staying the course about data-driven testing science regarding COVID, but I took every ad-lib and opportunity to praise the medical laboratory profession. I praised laboratorians for their hard work, and took a minute to say clearly and plainly, that they are indisputably healthcare heroes in this season of notability. In doing so, I found myself addressing a more pressing pandemic: The Path and MLS pipeline problem. We have a serious issue with finding new medical laboratory scientists and medical students to go into our field. The main cause and culprit? Our essential clinical invisibility. As we are much less patient facing than our other colleagues, it’s difficult to expose younger students considering various careers in healthcare to our specialty. Cue Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even TikTok.
I’ve talked about this before. And, of course, I’m biased: I’m on the official ASCP Social Media Communications Committee and was highly active in previous iterations including the #SoMeTeam as well as ASCP Social Media Ambassadors programs. Anyone who reads my pieces here knows I’m not social media shy—heck, I weaponized my online presence for residency interview season, networking around the clock to get my name and my work out there for programs to notice. Spoilers: it worked really, really well.
(If you’re one of those senior medical students who is preparing to practice the age-old tradition of wiping the internet clean of your presence, consider a 180 turnaround from that plan—at least if you’re applying to pathology…)
So what worked so well for me? Well, first some background. You know I’m on two ASCP committees, CCPD and Social Media. I’ve already told you I’ve been working the social media angles for a while now, at ASCP meetings, sharing content, etc. And I had a super busy, and super rewarding, residency interview season. With rotations and interviews at some amazing places, I was able to both learn a lot about what it is I really want to do and meet folks to talk about it with. All that being said, sometimes things just fall into place. Specifically, a global pandemic happened. …too soon?
I’m not going to rehash the early days of the pandemic for you, or talk about how I became involved on the ground floor of a lot of outreach and education efforts: that was sooo last month, I did that already (read it all here). But what I will talk about is the butterfly effect that each media engagement set into place for me.
In effect, the order of events for me these last few months looked like this:
- Writing pieces for Lablogatory¸ some based in scientific analysis of testing, some to address public health concerns and education.
- Making small viral online tid-bits aimed at educating lay people about overall health, avoiding exposure, and what testing means.
- Social media connection to join the #PathCast lecture series, of which my video has garnered approximately 20,000 individual views and was seen in almost 50 countries.
- Invitations from CDC-funded training agencies to explain testing considerations, virology details in translational science, and discuss how those most vulnerable to social determinants of health are most inequitably affected by pandemic conditions.
- Informal features where I was invited to discuss those intersectional tenets of medicine, public health, and socioeconomics with lay persons in a virtual group setting.
- An interview with Lifehacker magazine’s Vitals section, to answer reddit-style ask-me-anything questions regarding COVID testing online live with open to the public availability.
- Inclusion in Lifehacker magazine’s online podcast, where I was featured alongside other experts to discuss the effect of the pandemic on many aspects of life from health to finances.
- An interview with The Endless Files Podcast¸ where I was invited as a content expert to discuss the connections between laboratory data, public health, public policy, and discuss the political climate surrounding coronavirus concerns all over the sociopolitical spectrum.
- An interview with People of Pathology Podcast which gave me the chance to talk about my individual career path and transition from education about testing to advocacy and representation for our amazing profession.
- The nomination and selection by my medical school faculty and peers to deliver the student charge at my formal, virtual, medical graduation.
- …more are on the way!
Why am I listing these things? Is it my misplaced Greek hubris? Maybe. But before I fly too close to the sun, I’m trying to prove a point. That what started out as creating content on social media for health and wellness during a pandemic essentially became a snowball by summer. I was addressing pressingly relevant information during the obvious opportunity to step up and educate. But something else was happening; something I didn’t realize until recently. And whatever it was, I wasn’t getting there alone.
**All of this was made possible by social media recommendations and connections from friends and colleagues!**
PathCast? I was recommended by a pathologist friend on ASCP’s CCPD committee with me. The CDC-funded training? A former grad student friend of mine when I studied at Rush. Lifehacker? Made possible in a public call for content by our favorite medical lab scientist and Lablogatory editor, Kelly Swails. The Endless Files? Reached out to an old political science professor and friend at Loyola. People of Pathology? Social media connections with friends and CLS colleagues in Canada—you want to make things happen? Don’t go at it alone!
Don’t know how to get started in all this social media frenzy? Don’t fret. Basically, here’s a four-step process: make accounts on one or all of your favorite platforms, follow everyone you want to learn more from, share other’s content or your own frequently, and (most importantly) promote others before yourself! There are countless webinars and talks on how to use social media to leverage advocacy and education, just look at some of the greatest pathology teachers on Twitter: @KMirza, @CArnold_GI, @MArnold_PedPath, @RodneyRhode, @HermelinMD, @KreuterMD, @JMGardnerMD, and many, many more. But there’s more than just twitter! Many super talented folks team up to produce lectures, webinars, and even podcasts (check out the brand-spankin’-new PathPod here!)
Just dive in!
In conclusion, social media is the new (old) heavy hitter in the medical world. Younger med students are getting access to more specialty information than they ever have before, informing and guiding their career choices. Specialists of all kinds share and reshare excellent diamonds of content that galvanize medical discourse everywhere from Twitter to TikTok. What does this do? It closes the gap between professionals across disciplines, shines new spotlights on fields that traditionally got stamped with basement autopsy stereotypes, and creates digestible and understandable bridges for lay people to access our jargon-filled discourse. It only goes up from here.
Post-script: if you haven’t noticed the racially charged, horrible situations adding to the tumultuousness of 2020, there’s another lesson in this. Social media again proves a most-valuable and all-powerful tool to mobilize, demonstrate, collaborate, and unify thoughts, ideas, and causes. I doubt we will ever be free of tragic moments in history, but when we come together as one collective we can use our various platforms to honor heroes, shame wrong doers, celebrate positive change, and highlight systemic failings that might hold us back from true progress, justice, and peace. That includes the medical world, as all things cross at the intersections of human life and human rights.
Thank you for reading! Stay safe, stay well, and continue to practice safe, compassion-informed social distancing. The pandemic isn’t over, and neither is our work.
Until next time!
-Constantine E. Kanakis MD, MSc, MLS (ASCP)CM is a new first year resident physician in the Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Department at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago with interests in hematopathology, transfusion medicine, bioethics, public health, and graphic medicine. His posts focus on the broader issues important to the practice of clinical laboratory medicine and their applications to global/public health, outreach/education, and advancing medical science. He is actively involved in public health and education, advocating for visibility and advancement of pathology and lab medicine. Watch his TEDx talk entitled “Unrecognizable Medicine” and follow him on Twitter @CEKanakisMD.
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