Sunday, August 27, 2006

Medical blogging -- what's your opinion?

It's time to overcome that summer lethargy and reclaim the work ethic! AJ and I are giving a presentation at the Medical Humanities Conference, hosted this year on 4 and 5 September by King's College London. We're talking about ... medical blogs. It seems sensible to sound out our esteemed readership by asking your opinions on the ethical issues facing medical bloggers. Is it fair that doctors can reveal nothing of their patients yet patients can say whatever they like about their doctors (as long as it's not libellous)? Should doctors be giving medical advice in their blogs? Are there any specific blogs you can recommend as being particularly good? We'd love to hear from you on these or any other issues pertaining to medical blogging.

4 comments:

Kay Wotton said...

Wonderful that you are presenting about medical blogging. It feels like there is a lot more that we could be doing. I recently posted about the possibility of metablogs, although I am not sure that is what I mean or is needed. But I have so many medical friends that think it is only about journalling. Good luck.

Unknown said...

Thanks Borneo Breezes, your post on metablogging is very interesting (and relevant!).

Anonymous said...

It would be interesting to look at how the confidentiality issues in medical blogs compare with those in online counselling. There's a lot of online counselling offered by BACP counsellors but I don't know how they regulate it.

Unknown said...

Thanks, Woodstock and Oliver, for these thoughts. Any thoughts about the standards of confidentiality? Should doctors merely feel they can change the age and sex of patients they are talking about or should further steps be taken to preserve confidentiality? Or should bloggers have their patients consent to be written about? Can a doctor rely on using a pseudonym to protect his/her own identity?