How To Keep Up With Advances In Medicine

A third year resident in emergency medicine asked me what a “never event” was. I gave her an earful. Later we were discussing lawsuits and I mentioned the National Practitioner Data Bank. “What’s that?” she asked. I told her a little more about it and how it affects a physician’s willingness to settle malpractice cases.
She was impressed by my knowledge, but then her tone turned more earnest.

“How do you know about all these things?” she asked. “I consider myself pretty well-read. I read through a lot of journals and the textbooks, but I’ve never even heard of these things before.”

My advice to her was simple: “Read medical blogs.”

Medical blogs are up to the minute news. There isn’t a lag between the time the chapter is written, the time it is reviewed, the time it takes for multiple re-writes, the time it takes to get published, and then the time it takes to get into circulation. When I hit the “publish” button on my blog, what I write is there for everyone to read that minute. Blog hosts can get blasted in real-time. You don’t have to wait until next month and hope your letter to the editor gets published.

Mind you that you have to take what you read with a grain of salt. Do the research if you’re interested in a topic. Call bullshit when you think the person making the post is wrong. That’s what peer review is all about.

The landscape is changing. Journals have their place, but the information you can get in blogs can make you a medical Johnny On The Spot – and a lot of fun at dinner parties with your friends, too.

To that end, I am adding another page to this blog.

I started with the main page.

Then I collected a bunch of links so I added a “Links” page right under my header.

Now I’m going to try to keep up with all the medical blogs out there. So I’m starting the “Blog Links” page. On this new page I will list any medical blog out there. If you want your blog listed, just add it in the comment section in this form: [Medical/nursing specialty] – [Blog Name] – [link URL]

For example: Emergency Medicine – WhiteCoat Rants – http://whitecoatrants.wordpress.com

Every week or so I’ll try to add all the blogs in the comments onto the page itself.

I started a some specialties for now. Feel free to add more. Only requirement is that you have to post more than once a month on your blog to be included. Less frequent posters subject to deletion.

Hopefully this will become a resource for those who want to be “in the know” in medicine.