So why have a medical blog community? Countless volumes of case studies and endless hours of conferences and rounds already clog our schedules, so why add another thing to do? The answer lies in the merging of the old pattern of heuristic learning with the emerging power of social networking on the internet.
In the current paradigm, if you want to present a case to the mass of physicians out there, then you have to publish it in a journal, and given the stack that already sits on my desk, it’s unlikely most of us will ever even see the case. Even if you actually read the case, the only forum for discussion is a letter to the editor some weeks later, which is still no more than a painfully slow question and answer session.
Now, if discussion is what you crave, you can always hang out longer on rounds or grab a colleague for advice on a case. However, this still limits the scope of exposure of a really good case and gives you only the expertise, however formidable, of those at your institution.
So then, enter the blog. The purpose of this site is to allow physicians, residents, students, and allied health professionals to post difficult in-process cases with unanswered questions and then to allow the virtual crowd to dissect, chew on, and then comment upon them. In this way, a broad audience can have a very-close-to-real-time discussion of the issues at hand. You can also absolve some of that journal pile guilt…
You are cordially invited to comment on the cases found in the blogs of your choice, become an author of the cases themselves, or better yet, create your own blog to fill a gap in the subjects covered. You can keep your creation broad (such as a blog devoted to preventative medicine) or distill it down to a niche (such as a blog focused on the nuances of precapillary pulmonary hypertension). It’s your community and it’s a new way of collaborating, so you can make it whatever you want it to be. Enjoy!