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This week we had the very distinct pleasure of speaking with Paul Slosar, MD of the San Francisco Spine Institute and the Spine Care Group. Paul is a well known and very active Spine Connect user, working in and across multiple and diverse public groups as well as with emerging technologies in the community. He has been involved with the community from its inception and has watched it blossom and now extend its reach across the waters to surgeons in developing countries who have some of the most complicated and unusual cases Paul as ever seen.

As Paul says, the real contribution SpineConnect brings to surgeons is that it provides them with support, advice and continual development professionally, any time, any where. Surgeons can join larger public groups which may be geographically based, specialist groups or even private groups where emerging technologies are developed. This sharing of knowledge in the community allows younger surgeons, older surgeons, fellows and mentors to work together with challenging cases and new tools. Just knowing that your colleagues are there provides surgeons with confidence that perhaps they might not have alone in private practice.

As we become more wired, it is becoming increasingly easy for community members to participate in their own time zones and contribute. This increased response-ability improves clinical care and practice and builds a sense of professional community as personal connections made online in SpineConnect migrate over to face to face interactions at conferences and in meetings. Paul says this is incredibly important when reaching out to fellow surgeons in developing countries to help improve their situation as well as expanding the experiences of US based surgeons. Interestingly enough, in especially remote areas, it is the medical device countries with their distribution networks that facilitate connections between surgeons internationally. Even if surgeons do not contribute regularly there are many who benefit from just watching and reading the interactions on the community. You never know when you will meet that challenging case that you saw earlier in the week on the community in your own practice!

We hope you enjoy listening to Paul’s podcast as much as we did conducting it. It is not often we get to hear the voice of a power user in the community and hope you will take a moment to connect with him at some point == either online or face to face at your next meeting!

With thanks to vividBreeze and Hamed Saber for their inspiration!
Visit Dr. Paul Slosar’s Site for additional information.

Together we rise!

Kirsten Broadfoot

Tags: challenging cases, clinical practice, collaboration, collaboration in healthcare, community, developing countries, emerging technologies, fellowship, good clinical practices, healthcare, healthcare collaboration, international collaboration, internet collaboration, medical collaboration, mentoring, Paul Slosar, peer to peer, professional development, San Francisco Spine Institute, spine care, spineconnect, surgeons

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 11:56 am and is filed under Blog.