One of my first blog posts for 6minutes was about the increasing number of doctors who were keeping their own medical-related blogs – and in the case of Australian doctors, the drought of bloggers. Since then there have been more and more medical bloggers emerging to post their thoughts on the interweb – though as far as I can tell, still very few Australians.
As the medical blogosphere has matured, we have seen different styles of blogging emerge – some doctors keep diary-like blogs, describing their daily life, while others use blogging as a way to discuss politics or to vent their rage about the shortcomings of the health service. In the US, many doctors use blogs to discuss clinical topics and progress in medicine, with some focusing on their particular specialities from emergency medicine to psychiatry. Not surprisingly, most doctors prefer to remain anonymous online.
Well maybe the reticence of Australian doctors to enter the blogosphere is justified. In the last few months we have seen several medical bloggers lose their jobs and lost legal cases against them as a result of what they have posted online. A UK doctor, Dr Rita Pal, who writes openly on her whistleblower website of NHS Exposed has been fired and is being investigated by the General Medical Council for allegedly breaching confidentiality by linking to a public document hosted on another website.
Meanwhile in the US a paediatrician has made a substantial settlement in a negligence case against him after being outed as a medical blogger commenting on the same case. As others have already pointed out, anonymity as a blogger should not be taken for granted. The medical blogger Dr Anonymous soon found that he was anything but anonymous to some. As the AMA president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal said, there was more to de-identifying medical information than just taking names off a blog.
Will this lead to the demise of medical blogging, as some have predicted? Others have suggested that medical blogging may move to closed Facebook-style networking sites.
Like others, doctors are learning the limits of the blogosphere. How long before it becomes regulated with guidelines, entry criteria and censorship?
Comments
The medical blogger story was very interesting. Lots of “there’s more to de-identifying material than rubbing out the name”. Could those that issue these platitudes please elaborate?
Posted by Dr Chris Topovsek on Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Many thanks for the mention :)
Safe to say the GMC have been looking for an opportunity to silence medical bloggers for sometime now. If they can't link, they can't blog effectively and so their threat is neutralised. Its not going to work though :)
