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.