Interesting week in the medical blogosphere. It seems medbloggers are dropping right and left. This week saw the dissolution of the famed pedblogger Flea, apparently over postings on his malpractice trial. Neonatal Doc, Fat Doc and others have pulled the plug recently for various reasons. Check out Doctor Anonymous, Dr. Val, or KevinMD.
Medical blogging is tricky business and the rules of absolute transparency that make great blogs great are problematic for the medblogger. Patient confidentiality is king and what’s tolerated in other industries simply doesn’t apply with us. And as we’ve seen, the sensitive issues of malpractice proceedings are best left from the public domain.
I might also add that the apparent security of anonymous blogging is something of a delusion. The same social network that keeps us together makes it hard to do what we do in secret. Liz Ditz has an interesting comment from Dr. Rob on the matter:
Revealing my identity makes it harder for me to fall into the “chat room” mentality that uses anonymity as a springboard for behavior that would never happen if my name was known. What I say, I stand behind. If I say something offensive, they have the right to challenge me. If I am wrong, I will say so and make the correction and/or apologize.
I think there’s a lot to this.
Thanks to Gwenn for some of these links.