Cast & Curious

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  • A (medical) blog assessment strategy

    I started this medical web blog in the late 2007 aiming at

    “logging” my thoughts, experiences and reactions to issues affecting my daily orthopedic practice.-Bone MD

    Like any other physician blogger, I was looking for better ways to communicate with fellow medical bloggers and readers. I’m still improving my skills on this fast evolving form of social media.

    Needles to say, I need to evaluate my blog, its effectiveness and relevance to my readers. I know there are so many intricate (some unknown) factors affecting such goals, but this rather difficult (often painful) task would help me deliver an effective, relevant and in depth medical- surgical web blog. Bridging the gap between medical jargons and patient’s level of understanding is no easy task indeed. Communication skills, in any form, must be continually improved!

    Searching an analysis tool for medical blogs in the net turned out to be a frustrating and time consuming effort. Few blog evaluating tool have made it to the top of the search engines lists. Often, these tools are limited to who can pay for its use. Luckily, there are some free, simple and effective evaluation strategy employed by pro blogging icons that we can modify to suit a Medical Blog Evaluation tool.

    The first method of evaluating a blog that came into mind is the one suggested by a blogging icon and IT guru, Yugatech-“make a SWOT analysis of your blog“. Perhaps this method is familiar to management and marketing guys out there (Alex of LifeSpy) but this management tool helped analyze and improve the “business” of healthcare delivery. This simple yet effective tool can be instrumental in analyzing your blog “state” and help layout plans for future directions of any web blog.

    Another method I stumbled upon while searching the net would be a modification of the BizBlogReview in evaluating a corporate blog. Fiona Torrance used this strategy to evaluate some of the top corporate blogs and made an assessment of the current status of corporate blogs abroad. This evaluation tool is a must for any blogger who is serious at improving their blogs and their “blogging effectiveness”.

    Here are the questions that the BizBlogReview created:

    1. How many blog entries are made by the corporation/author?
    2. How many participants exist?
    3. How many comments exist?
    4. How many links (blogroll) are on the site?
    5. What search engine is used?
    6. Does the blog have a blog policy and liability statement?
    7. Who is the audience?
    8. What is the writing style (formal/informal)?
    9. What is the writing tone (personal/professional)?
    10. What is the blog intent from the corporate and blogger perspective?.

    By modifying these evaluation tools and fitting it into a medical web blog, we can probably assess the current status of any medical web blog and help layout plans for an effective and in depth blogging style in 2008!

    (Next: The Orthopedic Logbook’ s Blog Evaluation)

  • The passage of the cheaper medicines act: Who’s got the better scalpel?

    I certainly laud the intentions of some politicians working hard “passing” a bill to improve our health care system. But when politicians begin to bicker with each other, I’m getting hell of goosebumps.


    The deliberations on Cheaper Medicines Act has been a flawless exhibition of our congress’ circus like “treatment algorithm” for an ailing Philippine health care system. It’s a deja vu of the Generics Act passed in the congress before- the mud (nay, shit) slinging and ass kissing, it is all governed by who’s got the numbers and the money, and not by the merits of the bill itself. Luckily for both bills, it survive the dirty tactics despite boulders of blabbering and rhetorics.

    I don’t want to go nitty gritty into the merits (or demerits) of the bill. I certainly believe it is the duty of every Filipino to read and understand congress bills affecting us, the cheaper medicines act included. No excuses whatsoever.

    I am not just comfortable with the fact that when I get sick and will undergo surgery, my surgeons would fight it out who’s got better scalpel to cut my skin. It’s darn scary!

  • Desirable traits of a good (or excellent) surgeon

    What makes a good surgeon?This is a common question that comes into the mind of patients whenever they choose their surgeons or physicians to entrust their life. There are probably a hundred of these “desirable” traits but they generally fall into “categories” of surgeon attitudes and are definitely interrelated. Medical school (and residency training) attempted to make us all adept at new skills and the science behind the art of medicine, yet there are some who excel in the hearts of their patients and colleagues. Here is why .

    • According to Dr. Thomas Russell, Executive Director of the American College of Surgeons“surgeons have to be technically adept…”, able to change when needed “…and have new ways of doing things” . This means that surgeons should have wide array of technical skills and be able to adapt or tailor his expertise to the patients he’s handling or his community of practice. This is remarkably important among us Filipino surgeons, that though we lag behind in technological advances in medicine (notice the disparity between what is taught in med school and what you have in the real life practice), we should be able to innovate from what we have with our solid foundation of scientific knowledge.
    • Compassionate and love for humanity. Filipinos are known for their superior compassion and love for their patients. Our patients expects us to be compassionate every time we deal with them. Being a Filipino, its a terrible offense not to.
    • Surgeons should be approachable and not difficult to deal with. Patients and colleagues hate any surgeon who treats them like they are inferior species of human beings. It will also save you from litigations and malpractice suits.
    • I would love a surgeon who is truthful and is open minded to any questions. He should be ready to answer any question from his patients and explain to them in a manner they can understand and relate. In this age of technological advances, not one patient wanted to be treated without having to know why and how his treated and what is his chances of recovering from the surgery.

    I can enumerate some more but this I think are the most important ones. A peculiar trait that Filipino patients wanted from their doctor or surgeons is their ability of a doctor or physician to “waive” partially or in whole the surgeons fee for rendering his professional service. While this trait is anchored probably on patient’s frugality, it can make or break your practice.

  • Skills every doctor should possess

    Perhaps, these skills apply also to Filipino MDs. Or not.

  • Trauma care facilities for bombing victims

    One bombing attempt foiled, another one killed many people and injured hundreds. Seems like a normal day for me. But I am not in Iraq or Afghanistan. I live in the Philippines.

    The news of another foiled bombing attempt in the busy marketplace of Tacurong City just went on the news because of a hero’s brave attempt at saving lives. Without such bravery and gore, I bet it would just be another addition to the so many attempts on the bomb scarred Tacurong City.

    I wonder whats with Tacurong City that terrorists seem to use it as a bomb exercise target more often! Money?Power?Politics? The place is bleeding! It had barely recovered yet from the previous bombing injuries it incurred! And here we go again…

    Manila has been rocked lately by a bomb that killed and injured hundreds of innocent victims. It is a nightmare to everyone.

    But unlike Metro Manila, Tacurong City don’t have the Level I Trauma Care center and the facilities to support medical staff tending to bombing victims. In the last powerful blast that wrecked havoc in Tacurong City, the medical support personnel were practically scampering for help and logistics and the city bled with its finances just to help the injured victims.

    Needless to say, prevention is still the best way to prevent this acts of terrorism. But when such disaster occur despite efforts to prevent it, it may be wise to just coordinate such medical interventions with the alert medical trauma response team and a Trauma Center.