Getting the best out of Twitter
| Use your real identity | It is easier to make a useful and authoritative contribution to debate if your identity is not hidden. Also, anonymity is only relative, so it cannot be relied on. |
| Be professional | Twitter seems ephemeral, but like anything else on the internet, the best principle is to remember that anyone, including your chief executive and your patients, can read anything that you type forever. |
| Preserve confidentiality | Do not discuss individual patients. |
| Do not give medical advice to individuals | Questions can be directed to patient organisations, for example, The British Lung Foundation in the UK (@lunguk). |
| Be kind and treat colleagues and others fairly and with respect | This speaks for itself. If you have to think twice about tweeting something you probably should not. |
| Irony does not work well on Twitter | The text allowed is short, so sometimes, this sort of nuance gets lost. |
| Have fun and take it slowly | Most people start slowly to get a feel for how twitter works. |