Social Media

Last night, Christian Sinclair, a palliative medicine physician and social media meets medicine leader hosted an online tweetchat/viewing of the PBS documentary to be aired tomorrow night, Facing Death (9 pm Eastern). The full documentary has been available online for a week or so, and you can watch it online now.

We watched the video and tweetchatted throughout, with extended tweetchatting at the end of each chapter of the video. It was easily the best and most informative twitter type event in which I have participated. Here is a blog post recapping the discussion.

I will write a bit more about what I think of the special soon. The short version is that it is an honest look at agonizing decisions, but the show doesn't accurately portray all the choices. Also, 83% of the deaths in the U.S. occur to persons who are age 65 or older; the show provides the story of 5 deaths, only one of whom is age 65 or older, so the sample is a bit skewed if it is meant to document 'how we die in America.'