A few basics if you are interested in signing up for Twitter:

How to sign up for twitter:

  • Go to https://twitter.com/signup
  • Sign up using an email or phone number
  • Download twitter on your phone/tablet through the app store (available on all platforms)

Your first tweet:

  • After you have logged into Twitter click on the blue button on the top right that says Tweet
  • Compose your first Tweet, it doesn’t have to be anything ground breaking, my first tweet was “Rare diagnoses are rarely right. But, when you are it is awesome!
  • At the end tag Matthew Cecchini, our Annual Meeting’s Social Media Advisor, Director of Post-Graduate Medical Education (type: @Path_Matt) and he will re-tweet it and welcome you to twitter. This will send your tweet to all 166 pathologists from around the world that follow Matt and immediately expand your network.
  • Click here for Dr. Marcio Gomes' Brief Twitter Guide for tweeting about the #capacp2017 conference in PEI!.

An in depth Pathologists Guide to Social Media:

Click here to access an excellent guide developed by Dr. Jerad Gardner (Soft tissue and Dermatopathologist). Dr. Gardner is the Chair, Social Media Subcommittee for USCAP. In his wiki he goes through all the basics of twitter and other social media platforms. There are sections on the ethics of posting on social media.  Below is an excerpt from this discussion as privacy concerns are one of the main reasons that limit the uptake of social media by physicians.

Is it ok to post de-identified histologic or clinical pictures on Facebook or Twitter?
This gets asked about a lot. The short answer is: YES. Below is the long answer. I'm not a lawyer, but here are my personal views:
Posting de-identified images does not in any way violate HIPAA. People who have argued with me about this usually either don't understand HIPAA, don't understand pathology, or more likely, both. I'm not a lawyer, but HIPAA makes it pretty clear what patient identifiers are: http://cphs.berkeley.edu/hipaa/hipaa18.html. Please note #17 on the list: "Full face photographic images and any comparable images". Histology images clearly do not qualify as that. For further evidence, look at medical journals. Histologic pictures, even of exceedingly rare cases or cases where n=1 are published in print and posted online. Most lay public don't read these journals, but medical journals are PUBLIC not private and can be accessed by anyone willing to pay or use a library. From an ethics/privacy/HIPAA perspective, posting histology pics on Facebook is no different from publishing them in a journal in my opinion.”

There has also been an effort to standardize the hastags(#) used in pathology in an official Pathology Tag Ontology

  • The complete list is accessible here.
  • Some examples are;
    • #dermpath = Dermatopathology
    • #PulmPath = Pulmonary And Pleural Pathology
    • #GIPath = Gastrointestinal and Liver Pathology
  • It is best to try and use the official tag as it will increase your audience.

- last updated December 2016 -