Dallas Hospital Live Tweets Surgery

By: Sarah Jones

Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas used Twitter to live tweet a heart transplant on Monday. The woman was placed on the donor list earlier this month and on Monday she received the news that there was a heart waiting for her. She signed an agreement saying she allowed the hospital to tweet and share pictures of the surgery on Twitter. This makes the first-ever live tweet of a surgery, and an important surgery at that. For privacy reasons her name used when referring to her in tweets was Jane. The hospital used the hashtag #HeartTXLive and had a team of six people tweeting during the entire process.

Source via Baylor Health/Twitter

According to Baylor Health's Twitter, it would seem the live tweet's purpose was to bring awareness to people who need organ transplants and encourage people to register to be organ donors. I think it was a fantastic idea, and it seems to have worked really well. 

Source via Baylor Health/Twitter

Not only did the hospital live tweet the event and bring in awareness for the donor list, it also used Twitter as a way for people to share their experiences with being donors or have received a transplant.  Not only does it bring awareness to donors and the hospital itself, but it also allows people to talk to other people about it and get a conversation going. Using social media as a tool to create awareness is probably the best use of the platforms. Some many people are reached through online platforms and to see an entity using it for the greater good is a really awesome thing to see. 

Although this was great PR and awareness and everything turned out well, there is still that option something could have gone wrong during the surgery. Since they were live tweeting, it was such a brave move to decide to do so. I'm also sure the PR team had a plan in place in case things did go awry, because I don't think they would go through with something so huge unless they knew what they were doing. Good PR is having best and worst case scenarios and how to go about both sides, and I think Baylor Health has a really smart PR team behind them, and I think more hospitals and nonprofits should utilize social media in a way that brings awareness to whatever issue they stand behind.