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Many of our patients (and employees for that matter), are unfamiliar with social media sites and how to use them. We have previously discussed Facebook and how to become a Mayo Clinic "fan," as well as how you can share Sharing Mayo Clinic. Today we start a weekly feature called "Social Media Saturdays" which will provide basic information about social media sites, along with a few pointers on how to get the most out of your experience with them. YouTube is the world's most popular video sharing site, with users uploading ten hours of new video every minute and viewing hundreds of millions of video streams each day.  On Mayo Clinic's YouTube "channel" you can watch videos about the latest Mayo Clinic research, see Mayo Clinic Medical Edge TV segments and view patient story videos. The complete listing of videos is here. If you want to know more about how to use YouTube, you may find the YouTube Handbook helpful, but here are a few tips to get started.

I work in the Public Affairs Department at Mayo Clinic, and I’ll be writing about patient support tools and patient support groups at Mayo Clinic. For my first post, I’m going to share a presentation from a longtime Mayo patient and caregiver. She found that her friends and neighbors all had the same questions about Mayo Clinic – so she put together a great presentation to empower patients and caregivers. Lessons I Have Learned from Mayo Clinic by Brenda McGuire When the third generation of our family was being treated by Mayo Clinic staff, I realized that I knew things about coping with illness that my waiting room companions did not. Past experiences had forced me to learn lessons that made subsequent illnesses easier to bear. While negotiating the world of medicine can be intimidating, learning those lessons was empowering. There was no need to be passive any more--just polite. After all, those medical types needed patients as much as we needed them.

I, like many on the Mayo team, came to the Mayo Clinic through unexpected circumstances and/or stayed much longer than I expected. I love to ...

It may sound somewhat strange to be talking about Summer during the middle of winter in Minnesota, but over 700 nursing students from across the ...

“Mayo Clinic” is one of the best-known and most-trusted “brand names,” but its origin has more to do with our inherent values than with any sophisticated marketing plan.   Mayo is a family name. William Worrall Mayo, M.D., a frontier doctor, settled his young family in Rochester, Minn., when he was appointed as an examining surgeon for the Union Army during the Civil War. In the 1880s, his sons, William and Charles, finished medical school and joined his medical practice.   The opening of Saint Marys Hospital in 1889 helped fuel rapid growth in the family practice. Starting in 1892, the Doctors Mayo took on partners whose skills complemented their own. This development paralleled the growth of specialty fields in medicine.

Frequent heartburn can raise your risk of developing Barrett's esophagus which in rare cases can lead to esophageal cancer.  Doctors at Mayo Clinic have studied a ...

Cancerous tumors in the head and neck  are often hard to reach. Doctors have to cut through bones such as your jaw to reach them. Now, ...

Fortune magazine recently named Mayo Clinic to its 2009 “100 Best Companies to Work For” list, marking the sixth consecutive year that Mayo has made ...

Mayo Clinic added a new Mayo One medical transport helicopter to its fleet late last fall. The new aircraft is Mayo’s first American Eurocopter EC145, which Mayo customized to incorporate many high-tech navigational features along with the latest in safety advancements. As it stands, the new Mayo One is one of the most advanced and well-equipped medical transport helicopters in the country. [slideshare id=984710&doc=mayo-one-1233682214366727-1] “Our goal is to elevate the standards for medical transport, both in terms of medical care and equipment and technology,” says Scott Zietlow, M.D., Mayo Clinic trauma surgeon and medical director of the Mayo One program. “With the introduction of the latest Mayo One aircraft, we have clearly achieved this by taking air medical transport services to a new and unprecedented level.”

  More than 7,000 runners are expected on Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus Feb. 15 ...

“I saw your feature on the research you’re doing. I realize it’s preliminary, but is there any additional information you could send me?” I’m always surprised how many people contact us about ongoing research projects. Folks with chronic conditions or their family members tend to search the Web for new information about potential treatments. At times I’ve received over 200 e-mails in response to a single news release or story. Many ask when a project will transition from basic or applied research studies into a clinical trial. They want to participate if possible, but many simply want to know more about the research process.

Daniel Rothamel of Charlottesville, Va. tells his story of coming to Mayo Clinic for treatment of chronic ulcerative colitis. Here's an excerpt: Once my wife and ...

Mayo Clinic knows that support from families, friends, co-workers, neighbors or others is an important aspect of the healing process. Because of this, we offer our ...

Ask anyone who gets them and they'll tell you, migraine headaches can be a real pain!  About 30-million Americans suffer from migraine headaches and while ...

When you hire a babysitter, you put the care and safety of your child in the hands of another. But would the person you hire ...

I work in Mayo Clinic’s Health Policy Center, planning and coordinating the center’s events.   [caption id="attachment_473" align="alignright" width="197" caption="Participants at the 2008 National Symposium on Health ...

Mayo Clinic uses technology to connect patients with home, family and friends A group of high school guys trading stories, laughing and joking is nothing out of the ordinary. Tyler Olson, a 17-year-old junior at Lake Mills High School in Iowa, is usually right in the middle of such gatherings. But on Sept. 5, 2008, everything changed for Tyler. That evening, during the first play of a varsity football game, a tackle went wrong and landed him in the hospital with a spinal cord injury. The severity of Tyler’s condition required a transfer to Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester, Minn. And although there’s only about 80 miles between Lake Mills and Rochester, the confinement of a hospital room can make the two towns seem a world apart.

When Craig McMillan found a lump in his left breast while showering in September 2004, he didn’t think much of it. The 59-year-old insurance agent from Quincy, Fla., assumed it was a harmless, fatty cyst like others he had had. But the decision to mention it to his family physician during his annual physical may have saved his life. “My wife and I were extremely shocked to learn I had breast cancer,” McMillan says. “Like most men, I thought it was primarily a women’s disease, so I was in denial and didn’t think it could happen to me.”

Here's an excerpt of Lindsay Wood's story, which she submitted on the Share Your Mayo Clinic Story open comment thread. ...On my second visit to Mayo ...

Editor's note: This article is from the Winter 2009 issue of the Sharing Mayo Clinic Newsletter. Using the measles virus and gene therapy to treat ovarian cancer Dixie Manley, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, was the first human to receive a reengineered measles virus to target her ovarian cancer. In July 2004, she participated in a Phase I clinical trial, receiving the virus in Mayo’s Clinical Research Unit. One of the goals of the trial was to study dosage safety and timing. Manley received six cycles of medication with very minimal side effects. “I knew from the beginning that this research might help me a great deal, or it might not help at all, but I felt that if it didn’t help me, it could possibly lead to something that might help other people,” Manley says.

Darren Rosenberg was one of the first patients (he's also a Mayo employee) to share his story through Sharing Mayo Clinic. So when KTTC TV wanted ...

Shortly after he was born in early 2008, Trevor King was diagnosed with Long QT Syndrome, a condition that could cause sudden cardiac death. He may be the youngest patient ever to get a pacemaker-defibrillator, a device that sends an electric shock to the heart when it detects a potentially life-threatening heart rhythm. But in the months following his birth and diagnosis, Trevor's mother Rhonda began participating in an online community for patients with Long QT and their families, and she began to question whether he had been correctly diagnosed. Here's the first part of her story of deciding to seek a second opinion for Trevor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFYiaMuZY4g Below is Part II of Trevor's story, as Mrs. King describes what happened when she and her husband arrived in Rochester, Minn. to see Dr. Michael Ackerman:

At the bottom of each story on Sharing Mayo Clinic you will note a toolbar that looks like this: These icons represent social networking, ...

Update 1/26/09: ABC's World News Tonight ran a story on Jan. 24 featuring Tanya. You can view and read it here. KSTP-TV (Minneapolis) and its sister ...

  Imagine a hospital room in the cardiac unit, with a patient, her family, doctors and nurses, all discussing the patient’s status and treatment options. So who are the experts in the room? Are they the doctors and nurses who have studied, practiced and devoted their lives to understanding and treating cardiac diseases? Are they the family members who can read the patient’s face and body language and know what the patient is too scared to ask herself? Is it the patient, who, after all, is the only one who really knows what her body feels like?

Mayo Clinic heart patients and family members returned to Mayo in Oct. 2008 to share stories of their care through a program called "Stories of ...

Facebook is the world's largest and fastest-growing social networking site, with more than 150 million active users. While it started on college campuses, it's now ...

Experts estimate that 20 percent of women experience excessive or prolonged menstrual bleeding at some time during their lives, particularly as they approach menopause. A ...

An extremely high fat content and low amount of carbs would seem contrary to most diets you hear about.  Well that's because the ketogenic diet ...

Whether it's from a car, plane, or amusement park ride, motion sickness can turn a summer outing into a mess. Let's go to Mayo Clinic ...

Is age 50 the new 30? That might be true when it comes to a common knee injury. You see, it used to be that ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hDYZl594ok If you've ever tried to quit smoking, you know how hard it can be. But if you're having surgery, kicking the habit is ...

Wouldn't it be great to go to a doctor who makes you feel relaxed, who really listens to you, and answered all your questions? Research ...

Stephen Kopecky, M.D., a Mayo Clinic physician specializing in preventive cardiology, describes ways to lower LDL (bad) cholesterol without taking prescription drugs called statins. ...

A study led by Mayo Clinic has found that infliximab (Remicade®) administered alone (monotherapy) or in combination with azathioprine is a more effective treatment for ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkxzueDxejs Many people with diabetes are at risk of developing wounds on their feet that just won't heal. They're also at risk of getting ...