COMMENTARY Social Media and Pediatric Hospital Medicine: How Our Discipline Benefi ts From a Virtual Community and Why It Matters for Our Future

Social media, defi ned as Internet-based applications that support the collabora-tive creation and exchange of user-generated content,1 is now part of our culture. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Doximity, blogs, and wikis are pervasive means of communication and information dissemination in our society. For physicians, this transparent way of communicating affects patient expectations, engagement, and education.2,3 Whether these methods are being used to network professionally, advocate for public health, or to provide patient outreach and education, physi-cian use and awareness of social media infl uence their clinical practice and pro-fessional engagement. SOCIAL MEDIA AT PEDIATRIC HOSPITAL MEDICINE At the Pediatric Hospital Medicine (PHM) conference in 2012, the planning com-mittee and conference attendees dedicated resources to social media. The pri-mary objective for the use of Facebook was to publicize conference events and content. The primary objective for the use of Twitter was to increase conference participants ’ engagement and satisfaction, as well as reach a larger audience on topics pertinent to PHM. At the PHM conference in 2013, social media faculty again supported Twitter and Facebook activity. In addition, the conference hashtag (#PHM2013) was regis-tered with the Symplur (Upland, CA) Healthcare Hashtags Projec