Season 3, Episode 24. Chuck and Chris on the road again. This time in Providence, Rhode Island for the AOA Annual Meeting. We share a few cases and then share a few more social media insights we learned while in London. Simply put, there is amazing and impactful social media activity taking place across the world in hand surgery!
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As always, thanks to @iampetermartin for the amazing introduction and conclusion music.
theupperhandpodcast.wustl.edu. And thanks to Eric Zhu, aspiring physician and podcast intern.
Season 3, Episode 24. Chuck and Chris on the road again. This time in Providence, Rhode Island for the AOA Annual Meeting. We share a few cases and then share a few more social media insights we learned while in London. Simply put, there is amazing and impactful social media activity taking place across the world in hand surgery!
We plan a newsletter launch soon. Subscribe here: https://wustl.us6.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=c6fe13919f69cbe248767c4e8&id=10e0c1dd85
Survey Link:
Help Chuck and Chris understand better what you like and what we can improve. And be entered for drawing to win a mug! https://bit.ly/349aUvz
As always, thanks to @iampetermartin for the amazing introduction and conclusion music.
theupperhandpodcast.wustl.edu. And thanks to Eric Zhu, aspiring physician and podcast intern.
Welcome to the upper hand podcast where Chuck and Chris talk hand surgery.
Chris Dy:We are two hand surgeons at Washington University in St. Louis here to talk about all things hand surgery related from technical to personal.
Charles Goldfarb:Please subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts.
Chris Dy:And thank you in advance for leaving a review and leaving a rating wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Chuck, how are you?
Charles Goldfarb:I'm well, I'm a little thrown off by your speaking first.
Chris Dy:I know it probably throws you off just a little bit. But you know, we're not in our normal environment. We're actually traveling.
Charles Goldfarb:We've been traveling a lot. This is my fourth trip in the last month. What about you?
Chris Dy:I think I think it's my second work trip in the last month. Yeah. So we were filming our semi recording our Live episode in London. And now I went back and worked for a bit. I think he went back and worked for a day. And now we're in Providence.
Charles Goldfarb:We're in Providence for the AOA annual meeting, which has been pretty great so far.
Chris Dy:Yeah, it's been it's been really, really interesting. A lot of interesting talks, not the normal kind of orthopedic or hand surgery meeting just because it gets into other issues more societal and education based.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah. And that's why I like its leadership, a lot of D and AI efforts. And there was a great symposium on artificial intelligence this morning. So really, really good stuff. And they probably means a little bit more to you today than it did yesterday. Because you were nominated for a board member position.
Chris Dy:Yeah. Very excited. Delegate at large, as they say large and in charge. Yes. It's, it's great to be able to, to be part of it. I don't know what I'm signing up for it, to be honest with you with the executive committee. But we're gonna find out and I think you're paying special attention to this meeting, because you're going to be running the meeting in Salt Lake City next year.
Charles Goldfarb:I am. It is true. And it I think it'll be a little less rigorous than the hand Society meeting was, but it's also different. So is different people broader constituency, meaning I need to find the right people to lead the right symposia. But yeah, you're gonna think you're gonna love it. There's great people in this organization.
Chris Dy:Fantastic. And you know, one thing, I noticed that the pace is very different. So there aren't, you know, 18 different rooms running with different content, which will make your life a lot easier, because you've got to do some pretty big symposia. But you don't have to program two or three rooms at the same time.
Charles Goldfarb:That's right. And there is intentionally and I think all societies can learn from this. There's intentional downtime, to allow networking and catching up. And as you and I have discussed, that's what made London so much fun. And that's why I've enjoyed Providence so far.
Chris Dy:And time to record podcasts for sure.
Charles Goldfarb:And times to record podcasts. Do you think do you think, Chris, that your podcast legacy helped your nomination and election for the board?
Chris Dy:You know, I think it did. I think that's what they were paying attention to? In all honesty, I think they were very interested in a couple of things that I put in my statement, one of them was about embracing newer forms of education. So you know, in all honesty, I think the podcast helped with that, as well as a particular interest in access to care. And I think that's something that the AOA is going to be tuning in and working on.
Charles Goldfarb:Perfect, I love it. Let's, I think you and I were both intrigued. And honestly, in some ways, moved by the social media session at the IFSSH last week, and we were both participants talking about the podcast. But there were a lot of really interesting discussions in sessions that were news to me, honestly.
Chris Dy:Yeah, no, absolutely. It was, it was very interesting. I will say, I want to thank our listeners in Singapore who came up to us and gave us some nice gifts My kids love Merli the little mer lion kind of thing that that you guys brought. And now I will say I did make a shameless plug for myself to to join the faculty for their meeting. And I did receive a faculty invitation. So I'm super thrilled.
Charles Goldfarb:Oh, my God, I was gonna say, I don't think she bit but apparently she fit.
Chris Dy:Well, or I think the one of the one of the program chair for their meeting in Singapore next year is actually somebody who I knew when he was a resident, or when he was a fellow when I was doing my residency in New York. So I think it worked out pretty well.
Charles Goldfarb:That that is great. You know, one of the things that I learned was that these social media committees are really what they're typically called our communication committees really are impactful in fashio, the Federation of the European Society of surgery, the hand has a pretty strong communications.
Chris Dy:Yeah, they do. And they're all very engaged. I think that they embrace the technology, that entire session was being that entire segment was being live streamed on Instagram Live, which I didn't realize until somebody was just holding their camera or their phone up the entire time. So that was super interesting to see. But I think a lot of people have really embraced what social media can do and I think that We saw a lot of different ways in which social media and different educational formats have been used to, especially in the last couple of years.
Charles Goldfarb:It was great. So why don't we run through some of those, just to make our audience aware of other social media success stories and opportunities? And I'll maybe list them one by one, and then we can discuss each one briefly.
Chris Dy:Sure. Well, we did give our talk, which, you know, probably was the highlight of the meeting for many.
Charles Goldfarb:Well, for you, and I, for sure, we did lead it off, which I think was a position of honor. And no other podcasts were really discussed. The first non podcast discussion was an online journal club. And this is the journal of Hand surgery European Journal Club. And Matt Brown and Christina Lipede, basically lead this effort, where they pick one or two articles invite the senior author to discuss the article online, which I think is a great format. And they had a nice discussion of that.
Chris Dy:Yah, they've done a really great job of, I think, taking, you know, a traditional type practice of the journal club, but really bringing it to the next level with the technology. I mean, imagine if we in our journal club at WashU, if we were able to talk to the authors for every article, that'd be great. You know, and I think that they follow the principles for an effective Journal Club, which have been laid out in their, in their publication, they're really happening and in engaging moderator, is certainly going to help. So they've designated a moderator. They designate people to present individual papers, which are usually fellows from different training programs in the UK, and then they have the authors on so I think that, you know, it's a wonderful marriage of, you know, old and new in terms of the concepts of discussing articles discussing literature, but then also having the engagement from across the world.
Charles Goldfarb:Well said, and the only other newfangled journal club that I'm aware of is one that you and I participate in pretty much every month, not quite every month is the the general answer to your American, which is the Twitter Journal Club led by Brett Graham.
Chris Dy:Yeah, that's a very different type of journal club. I think it's interesting because it allows some pretty concise and spontaneous communication. The challenge, I think, with that is just like with all these things, it's time zones, right. So I mean, I think Brent's been pretty flexible in terms of, you know, trying to have different sessions. And honestly, unless you use a specific app, it is a little bit tough to keep up with the with the conversation, but I think a lot of good thoughts have come out of that. And I will add, Matt, who gave the presentation is a an avid listener for the podcast. So Matt, thank you for the for the opportunity than when you asked me to speak in the other session on how we train. And I know that you're listening. So thanks for all your efforts with the JHS journal club.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, exactly, exactly. This is a great format. And I think, you know, the pandemic offered numerous opportunities. And this, this seems to have been one of them that has stuck. The other is the overstaffed webinar, excuse me. This was started by an led by Carlos Heras-Palou, I hope I pronounced that correctly, who gave a pretty impassioned discussion of how this began this webinar series with, quote, Master Hand surgeons around the world, and it's, it's really taken off, I don't recall the viewership numbers, but it wasn't present.
Chris Dy:The numbers are super high. And numbers are super high. And the funny story that he had about, you know how he edits it on Monday nights, I think, and then posted on Tuesday morning, and then if he falls asleep, and he ends up if he falls asleep at the computer and doesn't post it the next morning, he gets emails from around the world saying, Where is the journal club?
Charles Goldfarb:Which is awesome. And the webinar is really starting to stand on its own. And so it's another example of you create a bit of traction, and you get subscribers, so to speak, and they're gonna want the content. And so if you do it right to start, you can really build something special, which I think they have.
Chris Dy:Yeah, one of the things I thought was was super interesting was how he talked about using YouTube and using YouTube to really, you know, garner a ton of followers and a ton of viewers, which, you know, I think that if you're going to put the effort in to do a journal club like that once a month, or maybe it's once a week, but you know, once once in a period of time, if you can then leverage that. I think it grows your influence, because then you can work around the limitations of things like time zones.
Charles Goldfarb:Right, well said and the goal here is almost a digital textbook because I think he said, and he doesn't do all the social media and there's a very active social media presence around This webinar series, he admitted that he doesn't run that. But he's got the right people doing it.
Chris Dy:Yeah, for sure there. I know, the pulvertaft series is incredibly popular. We've had some of our trainees, watch those. And I've watched a couple and they're fantastic. And one of our partners, David Brogan has actually given one of the sessions, so you make sure you guys go download that one.
Charles Goldfarb:Nice so yeah, you can find that on YouTube pulvertaft webinars series. So the next one didn't resonate as much with me simply because I have no interest in it. That's judgmental operation, say like that. But it is the International microsurgery Club, which is fascinating to me, it really was wasn't the most fascinating. We'll get to that later. But this is a semi closed Facebook group with more than 17,000 members.
Chris Dy:Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, how Facebook is obviously the most widely used social media platform, I think it crosses it tends to skew towards an older demographic. But what they've done here is really taking advantage of, you know, the ability to showcase and get a ton of opinions. I'm sure there are tons of patient privacy concerns that they have to work around, especially given the nature of some of these reconstructions, if they're doing head and neck, that kind of thing. But the the group itself is remarkable. I know David, and I had a chance to be part of one of their live webinars, which was really, really fun to do, and just getting perspective from true leaders. They've done a great job of recruiting people that, that give the webinars and also contribute to the to the Facebook, to the Facebook group.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, this is led by Tommy Chang. Again, Facebook is not dead. This is a excellent use of Facebook potential.
Chris Dy:Yeah, absolutely. Not to say that Tommy doesn't do it alone. One of our one of my buddies, Johnny, who listens to the podcast, and actually spent some time training with Susan McKinnon in St. Louis, and was one of my hosts when I went to Chenggong, even before he came to St. Louis. So Johnny, you and Tommy Keep up the good work, you're clearly making a big difference in how a lot of people receive education. And I appreciate it actually brings me to the point that Carlos from pulvertaft brought up. For some people, this is the only hand surgery education they get. So clearly opening doors and really broadening availability to a lot of people.
Charles Goldfarb:Absolutely. Well said. And, yeah, we are sort of having an embarrassment of opportunities to learn. But for others, it's really, really important. Speaking of which, you and I have spoken a lot about both the value of surgical videos and the challenge of creating good surgical videos. Dr. G. K, has 14,000 subscribers to his hand surgery YouTube channel. These are self produced videos at least once a week. And he has some videos with more than 20,000 views. Really impressive.
Chris Dy:Yeah, it's really impressive. And he he went through very much an infomercial style about how he makes his videos. And, you know, honestly, videos are one of those things where we just don't do enough of I think that, you know, I talked about in that session that, you know, when I was listening to a podcast, actually on the way to the meeting, there's an NYU visit for business professor that talked about, you know, one way to disproportionately grow your influence is to master Master new forms of media. And I think, you know, one example, you know, Dr. McKinnon is someone who's incredibly influential and accomplished, but she really grew her influence by releasing those surgical videos and making them free. And I think that's one thing that, you know, we should really try to get more of our surgical videos out there just to supplement how our trainees learn. But then also, our patients are looking up surgical videos, and our patients want more educational content, too. So one of the things I'm going to try to be better about is at least doing some patient education videos, so that we can use them. And I'm doing some really interesting stuff with, there's a group out of Michigan, that is Michigan State, I believe, that's using a virtual headset for VR that they play for patients during wide awake surgeries. And then you can actually include your patient instructions and education on there. Now, some would argue why don't you just do that while you're doing the while you're doing the surgery, but there's something that they could at least view during the surgery, they could view it afterwards, they can even review it beforehand. It's just makes the messaging so much easier.
Charles Goldfarb:Well said and the business school professor you allude to is shorter, Scott Galloway, who I'm a big fan of, and he has a lot of thoughts about a lot of different things, both on his podcast and his books that he's written. And I started looking at that, look, that's why you and I are doing a podcast in part, just exploring new media for sharing our message.
Chris Dy:Yep. Galloway is the master of the hot take. And you know, I guess that leads us into some of the other presentations, you know, regarding more traditional or non traditional, but the newer forms of social media, we didn't have anybody talking about tick tock, but there were some folks that were talking about using things like Instagram to grow either your practice or Are to grow your individual presence.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah. Marcela Rodriguez from Brazil was really impressive. She was there in person. She has 43,000 followers on Instagram.
Chris Dy:And the WashU hand account just got to 1000. So kudos to Lauren Wessel. And Shohbit and Jocelyn, who really helped build that account up.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, 43,000 is a whole different level. And clearly it's it's more patient driven and patient centric. I do follow her, although I'm having trouble with the language barrier, but it's really remarkably impressive.
Chris Dy:Yeah, you know, she, Marcella talked a little bit about how she uses that platform. And it really was nice that she talked about how it started off as something that's supposed to be very educational. And, you know, she found that there was a big, a big need and gap in terms of what was being provided. And, you know, it just really took off from there.
Charles Goldfarb:And then one other person, I'd like to mention from kind of how they grew, their practice was probably the most impactful talk that we heard. This was Nikolai Karpinski from Russia, who shared how he uses social media to have built his practice in Russia. And what was interesting is a couple of things one, Russian citizens don't have, I guess, let's go back to years, if you know, Russian citizens did not have a lot of access to medical education, and opportunities to just search Google, for example, on different medical problems. And so he therefore created YouTube videos and different social media, educational opportunities, he stated that one of his videos had over 2 million views on carpal tunnel. But what was most impactful was the fact that the impact of the war has essentially led to all social media content being cut off. And it was just really impactful, how he shared that and how challenging the war has been from his perspective.
Chris Dy:Yeah, it's interesting. So he didn't join live, he pre recorded and sent over a video and, you know, he used some words, I think, like war, like you're not supposed to use if you're in Russia, and I'm, you know, wondering how he got that video out to to the organizers in London, but I think he also, you know, provided some very useful and sobering context to, you know, to everything that we have going on, you know, in the rest of the world.
Charles Goldfarb:Yeah, the one final person who spoke was actually a registrar. So a trainee, Simon Fleming, who has over 40,000 followers on Twitter. And he, you know, his, his angle, so to speak is inclusion and diversity. And he is passionate about these topics, and is very well spoken.
Chris Dy:Yeah. So I actually think Simon listens to the podcast as well. So Simon, thank you for listening. And Simon Says really incredible work in this space. He's got a great TED talk up there, actually. And you can tell that he's a very polished presenter, and clearly feels passionately about this. And Simon talks a lot about, you know, bringing change from within the trainee pool, and really questioning the establishment, obviously, something that's very challenging to do, given the power dynamics of being a trainee, and especially in something in a system like the National Health System in the UK.
Charles Goldfarb:Yes. And I think we should close by saying that Maria is blue Gus, I hope I pronounced that correctly.
Chris Dy:You're gonna need to go to some pronunciation lessons.
Charles Goldfarb:I'm very handicapped in the language arts. Anyways, Maria was fantastic. She's very articulate what was funny in the preparation for this session. She said a lot of pre recorded videos where it was really hard to heart it was kind of a one on one conversation. She's very passionate about social media. And she put together a fantastic session, which I was happy to help moderate and I learned a ton.
Chris Dy:And she also sends a nice thank you video, which you don't always get. So I think Chuck, maybe that should be something you'd take to the AOA meeting next year. I want you to send pre I want you to record Thank you videos for all of your your moderators,
Charles Goldfarb:I think I might do it. Don't hold me to it in case anyone's listening who might be expecting one but I think it's a good idea.
Chris Dy:All right. Well, I had a great time in London. I was fortunate enough to go visit Mr. Tom quick, a peripheral nerve surgeon in London on the next day that I had there as part of my ASSH Gelberman traveling fellowship. It was really interesting to be on the inside of an NHS hospital and to see what what their life is like, and he's got a fantastic collaboration with with a physio there, Hazel Brown, great team, really, they were great hosts and even got to do a little walking tour in London, which was fun.
Charles Goldfarb:It was a fun trip for me as well, the camaraderie, the connections, the International Connections, which obviously we have all missed, was really great. And while Providence is you know, different is still been really enjoyable in its own right.
Chris Dy:Are you jetlagged still?
Charles Goldfarb:No, I don't think I'm jet lagged anymore. You?
Chris Dy:No, I tried to discipline myself not to get too used To the London timezone, but I can say I'm probably still tired.
Charles Goldfarb:Yes, I think getting back to the regular routine next week is actually something I'm looking forward to. Although I may regret having said that.
Chris Dy:So the day after I got back, I had clinic, and I only had one zoom visit with a patient and during this telemedicine visit, I think I was sitting down and I had my head, I had my head in my hands doing something, and the patient's mom looks at me and she says, You look tired.
Charles Goldfarb:And all you can say is, yeah, you're right.
Chris Dy:You're right. Well, anyways, was fun. Congratulations to you for moderating such a great session on social media at the IFSSH meeting. And I think we'll be back to have another chat soon.
Charles Goldfarb:All right, excellent. Have a good day.
Chris Dy:You too.
Charles Goldfarb:Hey, Chris, that was fun. Let's do it again real soon.
Chris Dy:Sounds good. Well, be sure to check us out on Twitter@handpodcast. Hey, Chuck, what's your Twitter handle?
Charles Goldfarb:Mine is@congenitalhand. What about you?
Chris Dy:Mine is @ChrisDyMD spelled dy. And if you'd like to email us, you can reach us at hand podcast@gmail.com.
Charles Goldfarb:And remember, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Chris Dy:And be sure to leave a review that helps us get the word out.
Charles Goldfarb:Special thanks to Peter Martin for the amazing music. And remember, keep the upper hand. Come back next time