Over a span of several years, I’ve been blogging about almost everything related to my practice. That same time I “grew up” from a “grunt” blogger to one that takes positive insights to every bit of challenge hurled in front of me, medicine related or otherwise. This blog also “expanded” its horizons from just relating personal experiences to some “serious” stuff about healthcare.
Physicians still has the “authority” over medicine, but not without silent criticisms from “internet powered” patient. Patients gets medical information, validated or not, from the internet. That was years ago. The broad definition of internet sources it seems, is not limited to peer reviewed journals and strict professional medical organizations’ websites. Social media entered the picture and is becoming a source of medical information. In fact social media, has been pushing boundaries and game changing healthcare as we knew. Healthcare couldn’t just shrug off social media nowadays.
Thus most of the time, physicians just parry questions left and right, answering “yes that’s right mister” or “No mam that study you read on the internet is not accurate!”. In fact, physicians sometimes get into embarrassing moments when patients volunteer information from the internet none of us came across that data (because maybe, we are busy with doctoring and everything else other than googling). (Here’s one good guide on how to deal with the patients who surf the net made by Dr. Iris Tan)
Healthcare it seems, is playing catch up on social media.
In this set up, I began to rethink about this blog evolving role in social-media-healthcare-catch-up sort of thing. Five years into blogging, there still not that many physicians grabbing the opportunity of using social media as a healthcare tool. In the business sense, a social media strategy to aid in his practice or just healthcare for that matter.
[pullquote]I may not have campaigned, but the real score probably is this- we’re damn too busy. If we have break, we surely don’t want to bring up healthcare issues right in the coffee table, much worse online. It’s just taboo.[/pullquote]I thought of providing information about orthopedics or general medicine. But over the years providing such scientific informations per se are better done by sites related to professional medical organizations and peer reviewed journals.
Which brings me to what I’m probably changing a bit about the tone of this blog.
I like writing on a more personal level, presenting an information and then nitpick an idea to go deeper into how I’d be able understand it. It’s more of summarizing, injecting personal thoughts and giving a whole lot of personal touch to understanding medical information. There’s more of trying to reconcile experiences with whats the journals says. Most of the time, it’s the “bone of contention” or the question/ dilemma that needs to be decided or answered which keeps the information interesting and the interaction lively.
Thus, I’m gunning for a more personal, meaty content, on health care.
Note the blog theme is changing. Minimalist. More on content. And the title.,
My bone of contention…
