The Role of Social Networking in the Medical Community: A Review

The Use of Social Networking in the Medical Community for Decision-Making

1. The particular article written by Coleman, Katz and Menzel (1957) talks about “whole network” among the doctors and medical practitioners. The article has explicitly spoken about the definite types of social media that only integrated among their colleagues only. The ties by which the doctors were connected to each other were highly based on professional grounds and not personal grounds. Most of them were advisors and discussion partners. However, the social media networks had different layers and in the next layer, a friendship network flowed among the doctors that tied them together to the medical community through their friendly and amicable relations. By that time, social media structures had become much more “open” . The social networking platforms, according to the article, have given the isolated doctors a community to belong to. As human beings are social animals and try to recognize themselves to a particular community or group, therefore, social networking platforms play a very important role in materializing such desires or rather, instincts.

2. The article depicts that socio-metric ties have helped the doctors to take medical decisions about the availability and usability of drugs for their patients. The reasons for such action and reaction can be deciphered as the age of modernization where social networking has become a part and parcel of life of every professional. Apart from that, when judgment is not clear, social validation becomes important for the professionals dealing with sensitive issues such as medicines and education. The circulation of information of different kinds of drugs, its availability, credibility and evolution throughout the time and market structure are important factors in a doctor’ s life. Therefore, it is well understood when he/she listens to another five or six doctors through social media, thereby, determining their decisions.

3. I would rather target the medical community than a broker for distributing a new prescription drug quickly because social media networking platform will provide me with thousands of different perspectives, approaches and opinions regarding the respective drug. Social networking will connect me with doctors from different disciplines who would readily see the new prescription drug, acknowledge it or give their valuable opinion regarding it.

4. Small world problem is a speculated and a genuine problem that is seeping directly and indirectly throughout the world. After the huge popularity of social media, the Harvard approach of calculation shows that any two person taken randomly might as well have distant link between each other either by their history of schooling, university days or social media history. However, the problem is accelerated with social media as it connects unknown people from distant places to each other within no time.

5. According to the article of Milgram (1967) in social communication, social distance matters more because social distance (social class, race, hierarchy) brings in with social taboos and restrictions which highly affects social communication to a larger extent. Social distance is a major factor of influence of social communication in the society.