Tag: Medblog

Taking off from my work on political blogs I am now looking at health and medical blogs. I had noticed them over the years, especially ones by students and friends (see below). On March 26, 2008 I spoke to the "Grand Rounds" Public Health seminar at the KU Medical School and simulcast to online participants at other Kansas Public Health Departments. My presentation was titled "PAGING DR. BLOG! Nontraditional Sources of Health Information." It was a study of how blogs and other social-interactive media are changing the dissemination and reception of health information for both the public and health practitioners. Medical blogs (medblogs) fall into certain categories: (1) Personal Illness MedBlogs: blogs written or edited by people suffering from a specific disease, condition, or injury. These can be: (a) First-Person Focus is on self, really for personal processing of illness. Started by one or very few people who are ill. Emphasis is on personal "I" in writing style and topics. Often contains self-encouragement. Often contains a chronology or updates...

As noted in my previous post I am now looking at the world of medical & health weblogs (Medblogs). One very important issue for medblogs resonates with a controversy in political blogging world: codes of ethics. Mary Schoen, one my students and I did a study of ethics codes in among political bloggers. In brief, we found very few had formal codes or even thought that they needed to have them. For health care professional who blog, the ethical issues are much acute. So I am working on an adaptation of the Hippocratic Oath to apply to the medblogger. Question: Should professionas who are MedBloggers take a Special Hippocratic Oath? (more…)...