Medical blogs in the USA Today

As a physician, we spend years learning to distill a clinical situation down to a succinct “story” that can be re-told when needed at rounds, at case conference, at tumor board, or in the clinical record. We seek to relay the “truth” as we can best discern it.

I am a new blogger and I clearly identify myself in my postings. I find it difficult to turn the stories into works of fiction. Since the “truth” is contained in the story, I am more likely to de-identify patients by leaving out identifying information rather than altering it. The real meaning might be contained in the subtle sub-texts, and since each reader takes away what he or she can find in the stories, I risk changing the lesson by altering what happened.