May 31, 2010
Posted by Elizabeth Han
We’re All Still Jenny from the Block: An Exhortation to Local Hospitals
“There are surely no better people in this world than locals who find themselves at home.” –(Me)
Guess what? I’ve suspected it for a while, but now I know. For me, local is still king. I recently found a stellar blog on pregnancy by Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center here in Toronto. And it made me more happy than another hospital social media success story in XYZ city ever could.
Look at Toronto in this picture. Look at Sunnybrook. We may be tiny, square, and pink, but with this blog, the pink thing has the Mother’s Touch. That’s something to smile about, I think!
“Mother’s Touch”
Mother’s Touch follows two mommys-to-be (both due in Fall 2010) on their pregnancy journey, with all the posts written by the mommys themselves. So far, they’ve tackled topics ranging from what to do with ballooning breasts, to the big reveal of the gender of Andrea’s baby (I won’t spoil the surprise 
). It’s a darling endeavor by a hospital that, along with Bloorview Kids Rehab and Mount Sinai Hospital, seems to be leading the internet media charge in Toronto.
But mommy-blogging isn’t a new idea – why the excitement?
Mommy-blogging has been around for a while. 23andMe has an entire community dedicated to this. Individual mommys have been at it for years on their own Blogger- and WordPress- islands, and many have amassed devoted followings that persist even after the babies are not-so-baby anymore.
However, I would like to posit to each hospital interested in social media yet afraid of saturation: you still have something very valuable to offer. You have local.
Local is the best.
There is something immensely potent about local. The benefit of social media is supposed to be the connections forged with strangers at opposite ends of the earth – and that’s still a great perk – but definitely not at the risk of losing local.
If I were pregnant, I’d want the best of both worlds. I’d have a look at 23andMe’s stuff. But if I’m having my baby at Sunnybrook, I want to talk to women who have experienced Sunnybrook. I want to read Mother’s Touch; I want to join a local Twitter hashtag conversation (#preggersinTO, anybody?); I want to be connected to women who will be due the same time as I. There are so many possibilities for a local hospital to do something…maybe not novel, but certainly remarkable.
So far, Sunnybrook seems pretty ahead. Here’s a part I clipped from their website:
That’s 6 different modes of social media they are currently into! Wonderful!
I have also been very glad to find a lot of other Toronto health organizations tweeting and Facebooking, but I think they need to go further. I won’t name any names, but it’s a little sad when hospitals Tweet like crazy…and yet a search for Twitter on their websites yields 0 hits.
Come on Toronto! This is my battle exhortation to you! Lead the way!
To end off: a reflection from my own life…
Mother’s Touch is just one blog. But it makes me think that this is the end of an era. This is the new What to Expect When You’re Expecting. True, I’ve never read WTEWYE, but I remember when my own dear Mommy was pregnant with my sister. I was 11 years old and utterly perplexed by the stack of pregnancy books on her dresser. Wasn’t it enough just to see and feel herself being pregnant, and talking to Daddy and me? I didn’t truly appreciate the need of the patient, my mother, for empowerment and knowledge. I believe now that she would have found a blog run by the local hospital pretty useful. Even years later, she still remarks on how much she was surprised by the top-notch care she received at delivery and convalescence…
I can’t help thinking: wouldn’t it have been so much more comforting simply to, well, know?
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