The age of social media has changed how spine surgeons can learn from each other. Lali Sekhon, MD, PhD, said for him, it’s important to focus on the goals behind posting.
“One of the questions you gotta ask is, ‘Which platform are people on?'” Dr. Sekhon, of Reno (Nev.) Orthopedic Center, said. “The second one is, ‘What is the motivation?”
While some surgeons have leveraged social media as ways to bring in more patients, Dr. Sekhon is focused on sharing and learning with others.
“I’m at a stage in my career where I’m not doing this for financial gain,” he said. “I’m not doing this for anything other than … wanting to ask questions. For me, I feel comfortable enough that I can ask questions, but the motivation is purely to engage in discourse.”
He also knows that most of his own patients aren’t on LinkedIn where he often shares talking points with other surgeons.
Dr. Sekhon said sometimes he’ll share details about his cases using de-identified patient information. But even then he said he sticks to the mantra of being honest, moral and ethical.
He said ideally surgeons should wait six months before posting, but sometimes he’ll get a patient’s consent to post de-identified case details the day of surgery. But at the end of the day, these posts should be seen as conversation starters.
“There are intraoperative pictures, there are day of surgery pictures, there are three months, six months, and zero peer review,” he said. “So you’ve got to take everything that you see with just a little bit of a grain of salt … I think it’s OK to post the day we do things, but we have to understand that this is not a peer reviewed media. This is a discussion.”
