Clinicians and researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Stanford Children’s Health, Sutter Health, and University of Kansas Cancer Center, joined r/medicine for an “Ask Me Anything” event
[See the final thread on Reddit.]
Due to a growing number of questions resulting from a U.S. mandate requiring clinicians to share progress notes with patients beginning Nov. 2, 2020, moderators of r/medicine (the popular medical community on Reddit) welcomed OpenNotes researchers and other clinician experts to participate in an “ask me anything” (AMA) live event on Wednesday, October 21, 2020.
In the 24 hours leading up to the live event, OpenNotes (u/myopennotes on Reddit) started a discussion thread for Redditors to begin submitting their questions to r/medicine. From 5-8pm Eastern on October 21, clinician and research experts on open notes answered questions about sharing progress notes with patients, and answered questions about the ONC Cures Rule enforcing this mandate.
“As a researcher, I am excited by the potential we have to disseminate accurate, evidence-based information about what we know from more than 80 published studies and from helping more than 250 health systems in their open notes implementations,” said Cait DesRoches, DrPH, director of OpenNotes, and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “Redditors on r/medicine represent a diverse group of clinicians around the world, and I imagine we’ll learn just as much from them as they may learn from us.”
Ask us anything about open notes: Proof it’s us.
Open notes experts who participated in the r/medicine AMA included:
- Sigall K. Bell, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
- Cait M. DesRoches, DrPH, Director of OpenNotes, Harvard Medical School
- Leonor Fernandez, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School
- Stephen (Steve) O’Neill, LICSW, BCD, JD, OpenNotes mental health liaison, Harvard Medical School
- Steven Lane, MD, Sutter Health
- Chethan R. Sarabu, MD, Stanford Children’s Health
- Christian T. Sinclair, MD, University of Kansas Cancer Center
On Reddit, an Ask Me Anything (or AMA) is a live event in which experts answer questions on a specific topic posed by Reddit users (known as “Redditors”). r/medicine is the “subreddit” for medical professionals with over 300,000 members. Reddit is one of the most popular websites on the Internet with over 330 million users as of 2018.
In September 2020, the concept of open notes appeared on the front page of Reddit after receiving more than twelve-thousand “up votes” on the sub-Reddit r/YSK (You Should Know). The post led with:
Open notes has since appeared in conversations in r/medicine, r/nursing, and r/residency.
More about the ONC Cures Rule as it relates to open notes can be found here.
