Remo Aguilar
“Why not” ?
Was the first thing that came to mind when a fellow blogger suggested the idea of a medical blog carnival, Pinoy style akin to the Ground Rounds and SurgExperience abroad. I’ve been stalking these blog carnivals for so long (joined some) and read their posts. Frankly, on what they’re good at, our healthcare scenario just doesn’t fit. I’m often left pondering how these issues affect my life as an MD here in my land? That’s why I thought starting our own blog carnival would seem easier than getting lost in their discussions.
But why duplicate those already existing?
Duplication?No. Except for a few superb Pinoy MD bloggers already in those carnival (Doc Emer of Parallel Universe or Tess Termulo of Prudence MD) reading most of the posts in those carnivals made me feel my medical world is ten years behind. Indeed, I had a hard time relating to their banter simply because our health care arena is different from theirs!
Is there a need for such medical blog carnival, here?
Yes. Our unique experiences and the healthcare environment seem to be different in some way from that experienced by our foreign counterparts. Take the case of our Doctors to the Barrios MDs (Abyan ka Batch 23 DTTB) and Merry Cherry) who blog about their experiences in the boondocks or of those newly trained physicians (Doc Claire‘s In the Middle of Nowhere) and Bone MD, (To cut for living) trying to find their cut in the business of medicine. Some Pinoy MDs left (actually, just slashed a big portion of their time spent on medical practice) their comfortable practice and offered to render a different form of service to their country, like Martin Bautista (On My Way Home) and Dorothy (Doralicious). There are nameless MDs who are in another country in search for better practice conditions and those that have chosen to shift into some business for living here in the Philippines. Others simply talk about everything beautiful and non medical (there’s a lot, as their blogs have taught me) in this world, like Megamom’s Pinay Megamom, Em Dy‘s Pulse and At Random Ness. For the majority, simply surviving in this harsh business of medical practice is already enough topic to whine about by blogging!
And there are a lot more topics , more issues to tackle or just simple “other things non medical” to blog about.
There already forums for issues affecting the Filipino medical world. Why add one more?
Pinoy MD has done a great job of uniting Filipino MD’s in the net. Some of these MDs got blogs too. Doktorko has a repertoire of blogger and great posts for us to read. But one different thing about a blog carnival is that the posts are hosted to your blog site and you need not change your posting style or topic to you wish to talk. The “host’ blogger will just “introduce ” your post for the week, and put a link to that post in your site. And topics is updated every week.
Will it add (or diminish) anything to our healthcare environment? Will it add “something” to my blog, popularity perhaps?
To which my answer will be, “will you loose something if you join”? There is so much to gain. Knowledge is power. Blogging and reading someone else post(s) and blogs made me a little knowledgeable about so many things med school hasn’t taught me-including life. If the blog carnival will be a venue for “voicing out issues” affecting our health care, why not? It it affects our medical practice, the more we should get involved.
I bet majority of the medical bloggers out there don’t care about popularity and fame as bloggers. Some do. And it is alright to do so. Site traffic maybe increased, perhaps with the curious readers if we make a buzz. I blog as a form of exercising my finger flexors and lumbricals. If blogging increases the convolu
tions of my cerebrum and deepens my pocket (oh really now! I wish) then it would be a bonus.
Next: Blog carnival title and guidelines, who have joined and what to do if you want to join!
(Author’s note: Due credit and acknowledgment is give to the owners of the pictures used here and published at Deviant art, my favorite art repository)
It is very useful information. I like it very much. It will be help a huge number of people, who have the interest in this field. Keeps it up great work!!!!!.