In 3 weeks I will present a Grand Rounds talk on social media and internal medicine. If you had asked me if this would be a possibility when I started blogging in 2002, I would have laughed.

My social media resolution this year was to post on twitter every day with the #5goodminutes . I succeeded. What have I learned?

Having finished my residency 40 years ago, I still love internal medicine. I learned much new this year. Putting some pressure on myself to find something worthwhile to post each day forced me to read more. As usual, our learners continue to push me to become a better physician and educator.

So #medtwitter exploded (at least in my opinion). I have so many great follows that point me to exciting new information. Twitter has become a great way for me to stay connected and informed.

This was a huge year for medical podcasts. I have written about this recently. The excitement of hosting a podcast is difficult to describe. Colleagues and learners tell me how much they like these podcasts. Recording them is fun.

Here is some background on the process. I peruse the Annals of Internal Medicine regularly looking for potential podcast topics. Once I find one, I start looking for guests. Most of the guest are already colleagues, but I have found some wonderful guests previously unknown to me.

Once I find the article and guest, I carefully read and reread the article, highlighting key points. Then I send the guest an outline of the question areas and ask them if they have any suggestions for additional topics or modifications.

I hope my questions represent the questions that listeners want answered. The answers obviously sometimes influence questions that I did not plan. Often I will recapitulate the answer to make certain that I understand and I hope that helps the listeners also.

Once recording has finished, I listen to the “rough draft”, pulling out a few interesting quotes for the introduction. On that listen I often learn more than I did during the interview. I develop “Bob’s Pearls”, and record the introduction and outro.

I then send the podcast to our excellent audio experts at the Annals. They add the music and cut out the dead spaces to make the podcast smoother for listening. They then send me a link and I listen to be certain that everything sounds good.

On the Tuesday morning after the Monday afternoon release I listen once again. Each time I listen to the podcast my retention improves.

Other than medicine and social media, I continue to focus on maintaining my fitness and weight loss. From May 2013 to May 2014 I lost 40 pounds, going from a BMI of 29+ to 24+. I have now maintain that weight for 4.5 years. My fitness addiction – Orange Theory Fitness – that started in September 2015, continues full speed ahead. As of today I have taken 660 classes, making it likely that I will reach 700 classes before my 70th birthday on the Ides of March. Maintaining my weight and fitness improve my quality of life dramatically.

Finally, we just celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary yesterday. We have 2 wonderful children, a great son–in-law and a wonderful girl friend for our son. We have 2 delightful grandsons, one of whom did a marvelous job at his Bar Mitzvah this October.

I continue to work part-time at the VA. For me, part-time is 4.5 months of ward attending. I (and my colleagues and learners) do not believe that I will (or should) stop ward attending anytime soon. Each day on rounds is a chance to help our wonderful learners and deserving patients.

Thanks for reading, listening and following. I hope that I sometimes help others feel my joy and love of our field.