Vincent Rajkumar, Professor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Editor in Chief at Blood Cancer Journal, shared on X:
“I hear from some academic faculty in medicine that they run trials, make important discoveries, but don’t get new opportunities and are not recognized compared to colleagues who are highly visible on social media who may have done less than them.
My advice: Unlike the past where your publications were sufficient you should consider social media to be important for academic success in addition to your lectures and publications. Especially if your goal is to change clinical practice and maximize the impact of your findings.
Your voice on here is important. You also learn from here. Of course, celebrity on social media is not what counts. What counts as always are your enduring contributions to research like finding new diagnostic tests, new mechanisms of action, new treatments. But your voice on platforms like X can affect how much your research contributes to patient care, by helping you disseminate the information, interpret your findings, and even make you sought after to lead new clinical trials etc.
Use social media to your advantage; treat it like writing mini-editorials or reviews. Use it to increase your knowledge of what’s happening in other related fields, make new connections, and helping colleagues. Writing on here means you have to be clear and concise. That actually helps you formulate your own ideas. Helps you get better at writing and communication.
Add your thoughts! If you are a leader seeing this tell your junior colleagues who are not on this platform to come join the discussion.”
You can also read: ‘From Hobby to Movement: How Amol Akhade Turned Social Media Into a Global Oncology Classroom‘
