Surgeons should start tweeting operations.

• Position: Your Life - Brief article

Surgeons should add their voices to social media circles and online discussions, while faking care to understand fully the potential security and medical-legal implications of such an act. That is the message from two pediatricians, Philip Glick and Sani Yamout, who coauthored an article published in the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons, urging physicians to participate in online conversations about diseases and patient care--discussions frequently dominated by lay people and inaccurate information.

The pair of surgeons also says that social media rapidly expedites and amplifies communication for graduate and continuing medical education.

"Social media is a great way to leverage the time and research you put into training," says Glick, the senior author. "A surgeon's greatest legacy is his or her trainees, and a lot of the training consists of passing on information, lessons learned, and wisdom to the...