Blogging is a happy medium and it's never too late to start

Blogging helps you grow and meet wonderful people all over the world

"What have I learned as a blogger?", a 79-year-old blogger counts the ways:

1. Blogging gives me a focus

2. Blogging helps me stay young

3. Blogging helps me meet wonderful people all over the world

4. Blogging gives me an opportunity to grow

5. Blogging has the potential to create an income

It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it

From an interview of Seth Godin and Tom Peters:

"Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say. No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook. And it’s free."



Doctor, you can be a Twitter superstar in two easy steps

Here is how to start a medical blog today: For doctors: How to start using social media. Indeed, you can be a Twitter superstar in two easy steps.

My advice for doctors who are interested in using social media for professional purposes is simple:

- Start on Twitter, expand to a blog as natural progression.

- Input your blog posts automatically to a Facebook like/fan page.

- Listen to the leading physicians, nurses and patients' voices on Twitter, and reply.

- Comment on blogs.

- Do not be afraid to share your expertise.

- Comply with HIPAA and common sense.

References

Is it Too Late to Start Blogging?

Why you should start blogging in 2011

A blog can help your career - and even if it doesn't, it's still good for you

From CNN:

There is strong evidence that people who use their blog as a career tool do better. In 2005, a Pew survey found that people who blog are generally higher earners. People who use social media end up finding jobs that are a better fit.

Changing your career and skipping entry-level positions can be easier if you have a blog.

Most importantly, a blog is a great platform for networking. Just look at this picture from the annual CME meeting Essentials of EM 2011.

A blog is a good way to meet other people who think like you do and who are in your field. It helps you to make real connections with them based on ideas and passions.

Social media use allows you to focus your connections on other top performers, since blogging about career topics probably self-selects for engaged and motivated people.

Social media in medicine: How to be a Twitter superstar and help your patients and your practice

The key concept is TIC, Two Interlocking Cycles:

- Cycle of Patient Education
- Cycle of Online Information and Physician Education

The two cycles work together as two interlocking cogwheels (TIC).



Cycle of Patient Education (click here to enlarge the image). An editable copy for your presentation is available at Google Docs.



Cycle of Online Information and Physician Education (click here to enlarge the image). An editable copy for your presentation is available at Google Docs. Feel free to use the images in your own presentations with credit to AllergyCases.org.



References:

Blog your way to a better career. CNN.

Social media in medicine: How to be a Twitter superstar and help your patients and your practice

Patients directed to online tools don't necessarily use them: 25% checked website vs. 42% read same material on paper. Am Medical News, 2012.

Comments from Twitter:

Julie Meadows-Keefe @esq140: Challenge is finding time.

What it's like to study medicine at Cambridge (video)

What is "the favorite" for medical students in the UK at the moment? Going into General Practice (at minute 2:45 of the video). They are also "very keen into going into a specialty such as pediatrics". This is a night and day difference compared to their counterparts in the U.S.



From Cambridge University YouTube channel: "At Cambridge, we offer two medicine courses - the Standard Course and the Graduate Course. With both, our aim is to educate students to become compassionate, thoughtful, skilled members - and leaders - of the medical profession.

Success in medicine requires application and hard work, both while studying and when in practice. However, it brings great rewards in terms of job satisfaction, involving as it does a combination of science and human interactions, and numerous career opportunities."

To find out more about Medicine at Cambridge, see http://study.cam.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/medicine

Comments from Twitter:

Nick Bennett @peds_id_doc: Best medical school in the world. Seriously.

Medical School Life in Cambridge and Debrecen - @Berci compares the promotional videos http://goo.gl/BZm2w

Blogs are not going away - they will evolve, but not much, because it's a pretty simple idea

From Dave Winer: "I don't think blogs are going away, but I think the form will evolve, but maybe not very much, because it's a pretty simple idea — a person telling his or her story. In that sense it's not even very new. What is new, is the power for the individual to do it, for almost no money, and reach basically every person on the planet."

Why Mayo Clinic is a power user of social media: "Our patients are doing it, so this is where we need to be":



Last year, my good Twitter friend, and probably the most famous orthopedic surgeon using social media, @hjluks recently wrote: "Think it's time to put the blogging down...."

Is it time? Does blogging still have some place in the busy day of a practicing physician?

It really depends on what you use the blogging for. Here are just three examples:

- My blogs are my personal archive. I often post brief summaries of interesting articles with my personal comments. When I need to retrieve those during discussions with residents, students or patients, finding them is just a click away by using the custom search engine of the blog. Depending on the purpose of your blogs, the readership size and engagement often do not matter that much. For example, I have blogs that almost no one reads (my gardening blog) but I still post there and find them useful.

- Sometimes you need to point your Twitter/Facebook followers to a longer form explanation on a topic or a controversial issue. Blogs work well for that. A cardiologist was misunderstood by an e-patient recently. It took a 1,000-word blog post for him to explain what he really meant.

- You can create a practice website using blogging software. For example, FAQs for a physician practice can be hosted on a blog. Facebook and Twitter are disorganized and not easily searchable, and not everyone has the patience to watch videos to find (or miss) the answer to their question at the end.

Reasons to stop blogging

I know medical bloggers who stopped blogging or closed their Twitter accounts for similar reasons to those summarized below:

"He says in his final blog post that while he intended the personal blog to be a place where he could talk about ideas, his posts had started to “spark whole conversations that I never intended to start in the first place, conversations that leech precious time and energy while contributing precious little back.”

More related thoughts (the URL is inactive as of 04-28-2014):

"So many things can go wrong (with social media) if you don’t do it right. You can get stampeded and lose the game. Playing on the sidelines is more appealing.

If you run a hospital and decide to establish a vast living presence on the Web, people will say bad things about your doctors, your nurses, your waiting times in the ER, your food. You’ll have to deal with HIPAA. There’s also a chance that you’ll say something you’ll regret. Playing on the sidelines is more appealing."

On the other hand, consider this:


Duty calls. Image source: Xkcd.com, Creative Commons license.

Doctors are highly-qualified experts who limit their impact only to patients they see - if they don't publish, give lectures - and blog. In most cases, benefits far outweigh the risk and doctors should be encouraged to at least give it a try.

I tried to describe a practical and time-efficient approach here:

Social media in medicine: How to be a Twitter superstar and help your patients and your practice
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/social-media-in-medicine-how-to-be.html

Blogging also keeps you grounded and humble. Critical comments prompt you to back your clinical opinion, expressed in a blog post, with solid scientific references and that's a good thing.

This is a suggested Cycle of Patient Education (click here to enlarge the image):



A here is the suggested Cycle of Online Information and Physician Education (click here to enlarge the image):



The two cycles work together as two interlocking cogwheels. Here is how to facilitate the Rise of the ePhysican who works hand in hand with the ePatient:



Why you should start blogging

Quotes from an interview with Seth Godin and Tom Peters:

"Blogging is free. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you’re going to say.

No single thing in the last 15 years professionally has been more important to my life than blogging. It has changed my life, it has changed my perspective, it has changed my intellectual outlook, it’s changed my emotional outlook.

And it’s free."



Don't limit yourself to your blog - use Facebook and Twitter

Blogging can be great for personal growth but there is a lot more interaction on Twitter and Facebook nowadays as compared to blogs. If you have a blog, you must also have a Facebook "like" page (previously called "fan" page) and a Twitter account. These serve the dual purpose of distribution and commenting channels ("two-way street").

For example, Facebook pages get a lot more interaction than blogs for some medical journals - you can count the comments on the NEJM Facebook updates (the range is 9-180) vs. their blog (0). The blog has comments enabled, of course.

Facebook is the clear "winner" in terms of commenting activity, it is not even close:

NEJM Facebook page vs. NEJM blog (last checked in 2013)

What is the oldest medical blog?

I have maintained medical blogs since 2004 but never thought about blog anniversaries - blogging seems such a mundane task of daily life.

What is the "life expectancy" of a medical blog?

The studies are ongoing but the current record is around 8-10 years... http://goo.gl/5LRx

In the medical blogging world, the physician bloggers who produce high volume of original content often quit after 1-2 years. There is too much to handle. Medical blogging is a difficult task that requires a lot of time and mental energy (scientific accuracy, HIPAA compliance, ethics, etc.), and the financial rewards are nonexistent or negligible.

As pointed out in the comments, the "oldest" medical blog probably is Family Medicine Notes, followed by GruntDoc.

References:

Why Dave Winer Invented the Blog http://buff.ly/1iD1b27

Related reading and a lot of comments:

What is the oldest medical blog? http://bit.ly/1aSL3VY
Why you should start blogging in 2011 http://bit.ly/1aSKGdO
Doctors are natural communicators - social media is extension of what they do every day http://bit.ly/U2wB7O
6 Reasons Why Doctors Blog http://bit.ly/1aSL8c7
Who blogs? Personality predictors of blogging http://bit.ly/1aSLb7M

How to Avoid Dog Bites -- It's National Dog Bite Prevention Week

Dogs are the most diverse mammal species on the planet (http://buff.ly/1pxxt0k). They can vary in weight from 6 lb (3kg) to 200 lb (90kg) when fully grown and have widely differing body shapes and hair types.

Not surprisingly, dog-bite injuries in children (head and neck) peak in warmer weather. The family pet is to blame in 27% of cases, and pit bulls are most commonly involved.

Dog bites are the third leading cause of emergency room visits for children, and the majority of those bites are from a dog known by the child. The ASPCA's Director of Anti-Cruelty Behavior Research Dr. Katherine Miller discusses How to Avoid Dog Bites in this WSJ video:



Pay attention to the dog's body language

Put a safe amount of space between yourself and a dog if you see the following signals, that the dog is uncomfortable and might feel the need to bite:

tensed body
stiff tail
pulled back head and/or ears
furrowed brow
eyes rolled so the whites are visible
yawning
flicking tongue
intense stare
backing away

What to do if you think a dog may attack

Resist the impulse to scream and run away.
Remain motionless, hands at your sides, and avoid eye contact with the dog.
Once the dog loses interest in you, slowly back away until he is out of sight.
If the dog does attack, "feed" him your jacket, purse, bicycle, or anything that you can put between yourself and the dog.
If you fall or are knocked to the ground, curl into a ball with your hands over your ears and remain motionless. Try not to scream or roll around.

Here is a brief 3-minute summary from CNN with some practical tips how to prevent dog bites:



References:

How to Avoid a Dog Bite : The Humane Society of the United States http://buff.ly/1jTA6UO
How to avoid dog bites | Cesar Millan http://buff.ly/1gk2Gng
Dog-bite injuries in children peak in warm weather | Reuters http://buff.ly/1jTAhj4

Metallica drummer struggles with tinnitus: "Once your hearing is gone, it's gone"

From CNN:

"I've been playing loud rock music for the better part of 35 years," said Ulrich, 46, drummer for the heavy metal band Metallica. "I never used to play with any kind of protection."

Early in his career, without protection for his ears, the loud noise began to follow Ulrich off-stage. "It's this constant ringing in the ears," Ulrich said. "It never sort of goes away. It never just stops." It is a condition called tinnitus, a perception of sound where there is none.

"I try to point out to younger kids ... once your hearing is gone, it's gone, and there's no real remedy."

The military is generating a tremendous number of tinnitus patients."

References:

Metallica drummer struggles with ringing in ears. CNN.

Tinnitus Support Message Board: Going to a rock concert -- taking my earplugs.

Tinnitus: Patients do not have to ‘just live with it’. CCJM, 2011.

Tinnitus relief: Suggestions for patients. CCJM, 2011.
Noise Chart as It Relates to Hearing Damage and Hearing Loss http://goo.gl/tjZh1

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn, says researcher

From Telegraph:

The study findings have revealed that although unlucky people have almost no insight into the real causes of their good and bad luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their fortune.

Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected.

Unlucky people miss chance opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends.

Lucky people generate good fortune via 4 principles:

1. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities.
2. Make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition.
3. Create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations.
4. Adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.

Unlucky people often fail to follow their intuition when making a choice, whereas lucky people tend to respect hunches.

Unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine. Lucky people tend to see the positive side of their ill fortune.



References:

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph.co.uk.

Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.