Blogging offers doctors outlet for opinions
By Joseph Conn /
Kevin Pho,
M.D., is an internist in a five-physician Harvard Pilgrim primary care practice
in Nashua, N.H.
Allen Roberts, M.D., is an emergency room physician in Fort Worth.
The two physicians share a profession and a hobby. Both run weblogs.
A weblog, or blog, is a
form of Web site that affords the owner the opportunity to post his or her
writings on any topic imaginable and get feedback from readers.
Pho, a graduate of the Boston University School of
Medicine who completed his residency two years ago at Boston Medical Center,
started reading blogs about a year ago and launched a
blog
of his own this spring.
Pho estimates there are only a few hundred physician blogs out there now, but he thinks the number is growing.
An aggregator of medical weblogs, Medical News Feeds
lists a few iconoclastic blogs, including "CodeBlueBlog," "SoloDoc"
and "Trust Me, I'm a Doctor."
A fair number of physician blogs -- in fact, many blogs regardless of the author -- are given over to
self-indulgent rants. Pho's blog,
called "Kevin, M.D. Medical Weblog," is a
bit more subdued, with a balance of useful information -- there's a link to the
Harvard Pilgrim "Ask a Specialist" Web page, for example -- as well
as a column of Pho's essays and personal opinions.
But Pho says he doesn't mind a writer on a good rant
now and then.
"That's the beauty about blogs," Pho said. "If they want to be self-indulgent, they
can. This is not for business. It's for patients, but it is for myself and other doctors, too."
Pho added, "It's a way to argue and debate
medical issues, whether it's the cost of practice or universal healthcare. It's
also just a way to keep in touch with writing. Writing has always been a
favorite of mine."
The blog service is free, and although he had a
relative help him with the design of a site, anyone can get a blog up and running within 30 minutes, he said. It's the
quality of the postings that keeps readers interested, he said. Pho said his site draws about 200 visitors a day.
Pho said he doesn't think about a specific audience
when he sits down to the keyboard, typically for an hour a day to post and
reply to the postings of others.
"I write whatever comes to mind," he said. "It's full-time
editorializing."
Monday, for example, he took a poke at the news coverage in the New York
Times about former President Clinton's CABG surgery. The Times
reporter wrote that Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York-Presbyterian
Hospital "has the highest death rate for the operation in
"This is a pretty unfair piece," Pho wrote.
"One of major reasons why this is the case is that major academic medical
centers (such as Columbia-Presbyterian) also do the highest-risk patients that
no other medical center would want to touch. It is inevitable that the
mortality rate for these places are higher, and should
not be reflective of the quality of the institution nor the skill of the
surgeon."
"The mainstream media misses a lot of nuances," Pho
said. "I try to give a more grounded perspective. I may not be right, but
one of the beauties of this format is, it's my opinion. It's a kind of outlet
for me."
Roberts earlier served as a regimental and battalion surgeon with the Navy on
assignment to the Marine Corps, hence his blog name,
"GruntDoc:
Ramblings of an Emergency Physician in
Roberts said he's been blogging for about two years
and, unlike Pho, spends only about an hour and a half
a week writing and replying to postings. Still, he's
developed quite a following, averaging about 8,000 unique visitors a month,
which Roberts said he finds "amazing."
"I thought only my mom and me would read it," he said.
Unlike some of his peers, who parse and analyze and produce painstakingly
propounded postings, "I light up on something that interests me and I add
my two cents," Roberts said. "It combines my interest in computers
and venting my spleen. It's given me a great outlet for the minor amount of
creativity I have."