When I heard and were co-hosting the #HITsm tweetchat on the topic of Preserving Purpose in Medicine, the following question came to me, unbidden:
What is the purpose of a bee?
You see, Dr. Stork is an inveterate beekeeper. I’ve watched his bees on Periscope and Vine. We’ve discussed beekeeping on Blab (now replaced by Firetalk, get a “ticket” and come to our immediately after the upcoming 9/30 #HITsm chat!).
Bees, hives, and honey, constitute one of the most potent collections of metaphors in all of metaphor-dom: busy as a bee, queen bee, hive mind, swarm societies, and honey has been likened to spiritual insight harvested from the ordinary!
I could go all kinds of places with this metaphor. But I will refer you to a wonderful book about work lessons we can learn from bees, called Waggle (named after the dance bees perform to communicate):
Check out the chapter titles. Compare to the #HITsm topics. I’m sure you’ll come up with lots of cool metaphorical ideas! See you at the tweetchat!
Here are the HITsm topics!
Topic 1: When we aim to maintain purpose (in healthcare), what is that purpose exactly? What is it you? #HITsm
Topic 2: How can we as physicians work together to build more purpose for ourselves, and work with organizations to promote it? #HITsm
Topic 3: In what ways can healthcare technology work with physicians to improve the EHR experience? What would you change? #HITsm
Topic 4: What are some strategies for preserving purpose in medicine? How can we bring more compassion and caring to healthcare? #HITsm
Topic 5: Will healthcare become less effective in treating the whole person with less in-person visits & the growth of telemedicine & virtual visits? #HITsm
P.S. More about bees and beekeeping in this wonderful video from Brian!