Social Networking is usually a no-no at work and more young people use it as a means of communicating in our ever evolving high tech world. But you might be surprised to know that Mayo Clinic is using all forms of social media to its benefit, as well as the benefit of its patients…
More than 25 percent of Mayo Clinic patients come from more than 500 miles away. As a result, Mayo has turned to social media as a way to communicate with those patients.
Joan Dymand-Hintz was in her early 40’s when she became pregnant with her daughter. The happiness she and her husband Marc Hintz felt was short-lived. A week after learning she was pregnant, Joan, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based singer and mother of two sons, was diagnosed with breast cancer. Joan came to Mayo Clinic for a second opinion in hopes she would not have to terminate her pregnancy in order to treat the cancer.
Joan said her Mayo doctors, who included Dr. Donald Northfelt and Dr. Barbara Pockaj, gave her and her family hope. While pregnant, she had a mastectomy on her left breast and began chemotherapy. The Mayo Clinic team worked closely with Joan’s obstetrician from Scottsdale Healthcare. Joan’s pregnancy was induced a month early so she could resume additional chemotherapy treatment.
The couple’s daughter , Elle Marie Faith, is now 17-months old and a happy and healthy child.
Joan still comes to the breast clinic at Mayo Clinic in Arizona for follow-up care and just started taking part in a clinical trial for a breast cancer vaccine.
Please click below to see Joan share her Mayo Clinic in Arizona experience.
This story was submitted by Julie Janovsky, Public Affairs communications consultant at Mayo Clinic in Arizona.
This week, Alltop created a page for all the top Mayo Clinic news, which incorporates news feeds from Sharing Mayo Clinic and various other Mayo blogs, including the News Blog, Advancing the Science, and several from MayoClinic.com, including for example its Pregnancy blog. Mayo Clinic is the first medical center to have its own page on Alltop.
Here’s a screen shot of what the interface looks like (click to enlarge):
But the simplest way to see how it works is to try for yourself.
Mayo Clinic’s use of social media was highlighted this morning in a story on ABC’s Good Morning America (see the story). The story’s focus was on medical organizations using Twitter, but that’s just one of several social media tools Mayo Clinic is using to share in-depth medical information and to gather communities of Mayo Clinic employees, patients and their families. You can review posts in the social media category here on Sharing Mayo Clinic for some more detail on some of the platforms, but here’s a quick list of ways you can take advantage of these tools. (more…)
Lee Aase (@LeeAase) is Mayo Clinic’s manager for syndication and social media.
In previous “Social Media Saturday” posts I’ve introduced Mayo Clinic’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. Those are Mayo Clinic’s longer-established social networking platforms, and like the Sharing Mayo Clinic blog they have significant potential for sharing information, enabling patients and staff to make connections and bringing the worldwide Mayo Clinic community together.
Twitter is another popular and rapidly growing social site for making connections and spreading information rapidly. You’ve probably seen a lot about it in the news recently. YouTube now features Twitter among its ways to share videos with friends. Yesterday’s New York Times had an article about celebrities “tweeting” (the verb for Twitter activity), and ABC News has a similar story.
Mayo Clinic’s Twitter account has been active for about a year, established well before all the recent hype. Until now it has mainly provided a way for Twitter users to get updates on the latest Mayo Clinic news. But the rapid growth of Twitter’s user base now makes it potentially much more useful for connecting the Mayo Clinic community.
But what if you want to share your story through video?
One option is to contact our Mayo Clinic social media team when you are on one of the Mayo Clinic campuses, and we may be able to arrange a time when we can record your story on video. Then we can take care of the video uploading, if you’re unfamiliar with using video cameras and YouTube. Click here for more information on that option.
But if you’re already a YouTube user, you can upload your own video as Ken Hensler did (with some help from his grandson), and then send us a message so we can add it to Mayo’s “Favorites” on YouTube and possibly post here on the blog as well.
Here is a portion of Mr. Hensler’s email message about the video he uploaded to YouTube:
We would love to share the Youtube video of Catherine in any way that would support the Clinic. The Youtube video was filmed by me, her husband of 57 years. Our Mayo experience was as follows.
Mayo was able to diagnose and cure by robotic surgery, the removal of a cancerous bladder. Chemo therapy for 6 months followed. Then, two more major surgeries and a final check up by Dr. Paul Andrews and staff.
She received, at a very difficult time, the most excellent care from the staff at Mayo.
Today she wears an urostomy bag. She calls it her new purse. Catherine puts on her bathing suit and swims, straps on her snowboard and snowboards, and has just taken up ice skating with one of her great grandkids.
Thank you Dr. Andrews, and the wonderful caring folks at Mayo.
And here’s his video:
How many snowboarding (or ice skating) great grandmas do you know? And how about great grandpas who follow them down the slopes while shooting video? And who know how to upload videos to YouTube?
The fact that it all came after a cancer diagnosis and treatment makes it even more remarkable.
Catherine and Ken Hensler on Mammoth Mountain, Cal.
Many of our patients (and employees for that matter), are unfamiliar with social media sites and how to use them. We have previously discussed Facebook and how to become a Mayo Clinic “fan,” as well as how you can share Sharing Mayo Clinic. Today we start a weekly feature called “Social Media Saturdays” which will provide basic information about social media sites, along with a few pointers on how to get the most out of your experience with them.
YouTube is the world’s most popular video sharing site, with users uploading ten hours of new video every minute and viewing hundreds of millions of video streams each day.
