Curious.....

Forgive my curiosity - I've noticed a few people putting up private groups on Face Book - just curious why or what the intent is?

Thanks.

Sometimes you want to limit a group to certain members and treat the facebook page like a newsletter/message board and you don't want the ENTIRE world to see it!

There are also "secret" groups that don't show up anywhere on your profile/timeline as well...

Yes, I understand that.  Was more curious why specific hospital groups want a page I guess.  Nosy. lol

maybe because each hospital's directives (i.e. dietary limitations post surgery, etc) are so different, its better to give/ask advice from people who are following the same guidelines. Or to discuss centre-specific issues, such as "what a twerp/lovely person that dietitian is" or "how dreamy/dickish that surgeon is".

If you mean the recent group, they wanted to be able to ask people that went to the same clinic what their clinic wants.  I can't say as I blame them considering many people put in their threads here.  For ##### patients only and then others answer.  When I see threads that are clinic specific I'd never consider answering as I didn't go there.   Each place has their own rules.  My clinic has their own message forum and I love it as we all get the same rules.

What clinic are you going through?

I went through Surgical Weight Loss Centre 6 years ago.  I'm a self pay banded person, not many of us here.

Tracey, I needed to contact you. Can you message me when you get a moment?? thanks! :-)

Makes sense, was just curious :)  Thanks guys.

I agree with Tracey's post above. I think the motivation is absolutely to only talk with other people at your centre and discuss what your centre's requirements are etc. The bigger question is whether that a good idea. I mean, everybody already has all the information and hand-outs from their centre and I've yet to see a situation where in a 'pureed stage' emergency someone couldn't get thier questions answered. The problem with these groups is the assumption that what your particular centre is doing is the best thing for you, despite the fact that many other centres, surgeons and research say very different things and you have now closed yourself off from that other information. I think it is better to be exposed to a 'market place of ideas' and make determinations for yourself from all the information available.

For example (and this is just an example), lets say that all the Humber people started just hanging out with one another on FB and a whole bunch of them were diagnosed with iron deficient anemia. Despite this, Humber decides to continue to only ask the people with anemia to supplement iron, and not to get thier menstruating female patients to take it preventatively. The Humber people would never know that, say, St. Joe's Hamilton, whose people are all hanging out together on FB together separately too, decided to start telling every menstruating woman to supplement iron preventitively, and that thier numbers of iron deficient anemia have plummeted (this has not happened, it's just an example). Wouldn't this be useful information for the Humber people?

This is the whole point of a board like this, to exchange information, ideas and support!