Josh Padnick wonders:
The thing is, patients would absolutely LOVE this. I kmow I’d certainly love it. It’d be awesome to go to my doctor’s website, read his latest blog entry on say, eating healthy, or the importance of low sodium, and then to see him/her a few weeks later and be able to discuss what he had written about. How cool would that be?It would also serve an important role in helping me choose a doctor. I think the same goes for referring physicians. Suppose you’re a PCP and you go online to read Dr. X’s cardiology blog where he talks about a common misconception PCPs often have when requesting cardiology consults. Wouldn’t it be helpful for the PCP to read that? Wouldn’t it make him that much more likely to refer to that doctor?
Well, I’m trying to do my part. Time is the major reason. Physicians are pressed for time as it is, and blogging certainly won’t rank high on the to-do list. Blogging requires a commitment - it really won’t be effective if a doctor is “forced” to blog.
A final reason is that physicians are traditionally one of the last to adopt technology. Blogging and other web 2.0 applications are only used by a minority of doctors.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Minority of the doctors in the US? So what should I say here in Hungary? I try to convince hundreds of doctors to use these tools, I have ready presentations on several fields of medicine, but most of them are totally uninterested… We still need at least a year.
I don’t know that doctor’s are the last to accept new technology. What about all the science geeks (using the term affectionately) that went to med school?
The kind of blogs the author of the article endorses are frightfully boring and writing one would be like sticking an icepick in my ear.
Good Lord. Most of my colleagues, the new breed of physician, are very technologically savvy, they just don’t want to waste even more of their productive time on a boring chore for which they are not compensated.
I blog but http://www.pandabearmd.com is not a health information resource or otherwise an organ for The Man.