Various medical bloggers were quoted in today’s NPR piece talking about physician blogs.
Dr. Debra Peel, founder of the group Patient Privacy Rights, thinks that doctors should not be blogging at all:
“If you are unhappy with the people that you’re supposed to be serving and taking care of, you probably need therapy,” she says. “You don’t need to be venting your frustrations in a public manner like that. That’s very inappropriate and unprofessional.”
I agree that there is a very fine line regarding patient privacy and patient privacy, which is why I don’t blog about patients. It isn’t worth the risk.
However, a blog is a useful tool to communicate the various problems that the medical profession faces. It serves a conduit to mainstream media and the public, who do not have access to what happens “behind the curtain” of the medical world.
Related posts:
- Should physician blogs be held to a higher standard?
- The Detroit Free Press on medical blogs
- A doctor is sued, and blogs his malpractice trial
- LA Times on medical blogs
- A medblogger tones down
- Does consensual doctor-patient sex actually harm the public?
- Patient blogs: A HIPAA nightmare?
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{ 7 comments }
Blogging certainly has a place in medical practice. Blogging about patients does not. I agree with Kevin that blogging brings issues relating to medical practice into the forefront and this is a good thing.
I started reading a few medical blogs when the Glenn Beck emergency room video was going around. I wanted to find some commentary from those on the front lines who were dealing with the Glenn Becks of the world every day. I was surprised by much of what I found. I understand the frustrations of medicine today (way worse than when I worked in the medical field), but taken as a whole, the blogs seemed to be very contemptuous of patients, especially anyone on public assistance. And God help me when I get old, because apparently Little Old Ladies (LOLs) are to be either laughed at or ignored. I stopped reading all of the blogs after a month or so, with the exception of Kevin MD, and usually don’t follow the links that I know will take me to one of the blogs I stopped reading. If you need to rant and vent, you can do it in the doctor’s or nurse’s lounge among friends. The argument that it’s my blog and I can say whatever I want is valid, but since blogs are put out there for the world to read, physicians and others who demonstrate arrogance and contempt toward the people they encounter should be aware that they are doing damage to their profession.
I actually agree with the knock on the rant blogs (at least the ones that rant about patients) it IS unseemly to that in a public forum. However, the first part of the criticism:
“If you are unhappy with the people that you’re supposed to be serving and taking care of, you probably need therapy,”
Is blatantly false. The notion that because one is a doctor one should have the patience of a saint is ludicrous. Doctors are human too and sometimes we see/hear things that upset us. That doesn’t mean you need therapy it means you are normal.
Dr. Peel needs therapy if she believes there is patient privacy. The wife learns she is pregnant at the doctor’s. Waiting at home will be tons of mailers about baby products. The entire country knows about her test results.
I suggest that doctors use a fictional name. I was disappointed in the outcome of the Dr. Flea case. Dr. Flea was no more relevant to the trial, than Ian Fleming should be prosecuted for the extra-judicial killings of his character, James Bond. I would like to know where his defense attorney was sleeping that day.
Beyond the left wing bias of NPR and of everyone they allow on their airwaves, medical blogs serve to spread clinical discoveries quickly.
The value to patients of rapid dissemination of effective treatment trumps all left wing wacko bashing of clinicians.
From a patients perspective, I have to completely agree with the “rant on patients” type medical blogs. in fact, they had almost turned me completely against the medical profession until I stopped reading many of them.
I don’t understand how those type medical people, who have such anger and hostility toward patients, find public blogging about their hatred a good idea.
its the same ones, over and over, who find extreme fault with our elderly, our poor, and they almost always think everyone in the US who has ever sought ER care, must be an addict.
Anonymous 7:18: Thank you. You have rebutted that doctor view of ER patients by your literacy, graciousness, and classiness.
I too agree with Dr. Kevin; having owned and opearted a medical house call practice for the past 10 years we can write a thousand page book about the “adventures” of a medical hosue call practice and the patients and we would leave out the patients name so that they would remain anonymous. This happens all the time on television.
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