Medical Blogging 2.0? It's About Time...

With all due respect Dr. Eleazu, and other esteemed blogging colleagues, I think it's about time everyone zipped it. If I wanted to read anonymous rants, I would go to Craigslist Rants and Raves. Sure, we all need to let off steam now and then about stressful situations at work, but when it involves intimate details of the lives of other human beings - we have no right to parade those details in a public forum.

It's about time medical bloggers do a better job of self-censorship. Ranting about patients and their families on blogs is just not right. It is inevitable that someone will recognize themselves, and someone will be hurt. Ranting about people and situations in the institutions where we are employed is just, well, dumb. Why bite the hand that feeds you? We all know health care is a mess. Why not take the time to analyze the root cause of the problem that has irked you, and suggest an improvement in a blog? Do some research, advocate implementation of IT and other solutions to decrease errors and improve quality at your institution. The writers who do this are, to me, more mature and more interesting to read.

Our blog manager Leigh Shevchik reminded me that IT blogging went through this same growing up process a few years ago. Engineers and programmers posted anonymously and gossiped about what was going on in their corporations ("Think Dilbert meets Red Herring"...she says.) "Secrets were exposed, people were outed, ...some lost their jobs." At first the IT companies tried to ban blogging, but soon they embraced it, incorporated it as part of the culture and developed ground rules. Kind of like our community with our Medical Blogger Code of Ethics. We're teenagers now. We have to learn we can't just say whatever we feel like saying.

Thank you Ol.v!er [H2vPk]'s for use of photo mister dilbert vs. mister donut.

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