Google Health And Social Media Health and Team Coordination
We live in a time where uncertainty exists everywhere around us. We are aware of the existence of uncertainty because it interrupts our planning for the future as well as every little aspect of our present daily life. The technological improvement of the internet and the distribution of media and news has amplified uncertainties by the content shared through the internet and social media, that people consume, interact, and engage in. People’s reaction is sometimes exaggerated when they see a controversial post on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or when they watch a Youtube video. The reaction is even greater when they conduct a Google search and find out information that is even more ambiguous and controversial.
Very few proof-check content they read on the internet and most believe the sources of the information because of the number of followers and not because of credibility or the source’s expertise in the subject being shared. Things become complicated when patients come to an eye exam with a briefcase full of unanswered questions and hypotheses that they built upon controversial and ambiguous information that they have been reading about or searching for on Google or Youtube.
To properly respond to this frequent situation, eye care professionals and their staff should develop their organizational resilience and an important part of it that relates to situational awareness. Resilience is synonym for being able to survive, adapt, and thrive. It can be attributed to an individual, an organization, a population, or a system. Just like culture, with time, a kind of resilience develops in every mature organization. However, managers should deliberately develop and design resilience in the organization based on situational awareness and effective team coordination.
Dealing with daily issues that relate to suppliers, new staff members, property management, and healthcare providers may look easy compared with focusing on staying updated with what is happening around you and externally that can affect your internal operations. And for that, you need a respectful level of situational awareness. In military, a “sitrep” is a situational report that officers ask their soldiers on a given situation or event. Officers collect all the different “sitrep” from all sources and adjust their plans and base their decision on.
A who delivers a “sitrep” knows that the only ingredient for correct and effective “sitrep” is being alerted at a high level and constantly cultivating a mindset and culture of vigilance. Author of the book “Resiliense”, Rebekkah Aldrich defines Situational awareness as “the ability to identify, process, and comprehend the critical information about what is happening with regard to the mission. More simply, it’s knowing what is going on around you”. Without proper team coordination, situational awareness becomes insignificant, and the organization’s resilience is trivial.