By: Nathan Boonstra, MD, pediatrician at Blank Children’s Hospital
I’m excited to share a new community resource from Blank Children’s Hospital. Introducing PedsGeekMD.
When you are passionate about keeping children healthy, there’s a lot to geek out about. We are learning more than ever before about how to prevent disease, improve safety, and cultivate happy, healthy childhoods. Science is exciting, especially when it benefits kids. I’m looking forward to sharing this with parents, patients, and colleagues as my new blog, PedsGeekMD, moves forward.
Many doctors are hesitant to use social media, yet we live in a world where more and more parents are seeking medical information online. It’s where the parents and patients are, and where doctors, hospitals, and healthcare advocates should be. And where we can be doing things like:
Informing.
We’re at a point in pediatrics where parents are finding a fair amount of their medical information in the new(er) frontiers of the Internet and social media. According to the Pew Research Center, 72% of Internet users searched online for health information in the past year.
Perhaps nowhere is this more important than in the area of immunizations. Research finds that social networks (online or off) significantly affect parents’ perceptions of vaccines. At the same time, parents cite their child’s physician’s recommendations as the most significant decision-making factor regarding immunizations. What would the impact be on disease prevention if more physicians were willing to become a part of parents’ and patients’ social networks? It’s worth finding out.
Advocating.
When looking online, parents are presented with countless opinions about how to care for their child, but not necessarily from experts. Pediatricians need to prioritize being a trustworthy voice among the online cacophony. This is where we can advocate for protecting children from disease, alerting parents to safety concerns (like bogus treatments or product recalls), and help parents find reliable sources of health information on the Internet.
Sharing and Having Fun.
I’m a doctor, not a Vulcan. And, parenting is fun – so I’ll be bringing up those fun parenting issues such as whether to take your kids to see [insert sci-fi movie here], or how to make science fun on a rainy day. I hope you will stop by my blog. Please let me know any pediatric topics you’d like discussed on PedsGeekMD in the comments, or on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+. I’ll do my best to make it so.
Meet Dr. Boonstra
Dr. Boonstra provides primary pediatric care for children of all ages, diagnosing and treating both common and complex conditions.
Specializing in the field of Pediatrics, Dr. Boonstra is prepared to provide comprehensive medical care for infants, children, and adolescents, acting as their primary care physician.
Dr. Boonstra has the experience and skills to provide the proper medical care for children of all ages, working closely with parents to ensure that the child is developing and maturing properly.
