An interview with Digital Opinion Leader Prof. Richard Brady

CREATION.co’s CEO, Daniel Ghinn, recently interviewed Professor Richard Brady for the podcast Better Listening for Better Health on how he has used social media for nearly two decades to support his work as a consultant colorectal surgeon. Prof Brady runs a specialist practice in Inflammatory Bowel Disease surgery with a focus on robotics and leads Newcastle Centre for Bowel Disease Research hub. He is also Deputy Clinical Director for the NIHR National Patient Recruitment Centre Newcastle.

Why use social media?

Prof. Brady says he believes social media is a vital tool in healthcare professional communication, which not only allows learning and sharing among HCPs, but has transformed the advancement of medical science itself by allowing larger-scale studies than ever before. He sees a flattening of hierarchy online, enabling professionals to engage and learn from others across roles and seniority which is something that he says does not necessarily happen in a hospital setting.

Prof. Brady explains that social media connects those interested in a particular subject, allowing them to collaborate on shared aims and aspirations. As a colorectal surgeon, he has seen his community of peers create hashtags to enable messages to spread quickly across regions, hold online journal clubs to discuss interesting papers, disseminate research effectively, find collaborators to work with and even engage with patients (although he does not advocate for engaging patients; preferring to use social media for professional peer engagement). Prof. Brady has even conducted investigations to test whether social media has an effect on the outcome of published research, where he found positive results.

Benefits of social media

Prof. Brady’s day-to-day life on social media commonly includes checking in on what peers are up to, seeing who has been publishing research and looking at what centres are advertising for jobs so he can tell his trainees. Beyond the day-to-day, Prof. Brady sees social media as a great environment for research collaboration. In the UK, he says this has resulted in large-scale studies across many NHS sites. He mentions one study on stoma and the positive outcomes he experienced where he used social media to recruit for patients when he found himself struggling with traditional recruitment methods. 

Research is an area Prof. Brady passionately believes social media has helped him in. He and his colleagues have used social media as a sounding board for research ideas; to openly discuss with collaborators; to create a research group; to recruit other centres or researchers by advertising research online; to recruit patients; to get patient feedback on trials and to publish results online, disseminating them to a wider audience. Among the online community of surgeons, he still sees Twitter (aka X) as a core place for his speciality. However, he recognises the removal of the policing of platforms comes with a risk, and he says that now, in this unregulated environment, it is more difficult to find positive news. 

He has seen some trepidation about social media engagement from older HCPs who might not have entered the working environment with social media being an everyday part of their life. They share concerns they might unintentionally post something detrimental. Still, Prof. Brady’s advice for those HCPs is that if they remain professional in their posting, there is little to worry about. His tip is before posting, imagine what you are about to say will be shared with a room of 100 patients and post accordingly.

Advice to surgeons on social media

Prof. Brady’s advice to other surgeons wanting to grow their presence online is you can not be an island. Start by making conversations and connections with those who are already out there on social media. If you are trying to organise a community to come together for a campaign, make sure you have clear guidelines on who will post what, the hashtag you will use and how you plan for people to find you. He also believes that although professionals feel a moral responsibility to correct fake news, he understands it is not necessarily their role and can cause them to be targeted. He also reflects that by correcting fake news, you can unintentionally draw attention to it, so his preferred method is to post correct and more informative content to counterbalance the misinformation.

One thing he would have done differently if he were starting on social media now is to create content for different age groups, for example, medical students, who he feels he may have undersupported ahead of their move into their professional careers.

For the full interview with Prof. Richard Brady watch here:

Prof. Richard Brady features in our DOL Finder IBD dashboard as one of the world’s top Digital Opinion Leaders in this space. Learn more about our DOL Finder tool.