By Doug Brunk, San Diego Bureau
When Dr. Allen Roberts launched his medical blog www.gruntdoc.com
“I resisted for a year,” said Dr. Roberts, an emergency medicine physician who practices in Fort Worth, Tex. “I told myself, 'I just don't have anything to say.' But after awhile I decided to try it. I found out I actually liked it. I still don't have anything to say but I'm still blogging.”
Dr. Roberts said the purpose of gruntdoc.com is to keep him entertained. “That sounds incredibly selfish, but the day I stop enjoying it, I'm going to stop doing it,” he said, noting that 500–700 people visit his blog each day. “I have no pretensions that I'm educating the populace on medicine or that I'm going to solve a single problem in the world with the blog. I just do it for fun.”
Humor is a common element in his entries. On April 8, 2006, he blogged about the best chief complaint of that night's ER shift: “I was assaulted with a telephone and now my ear is ringing.” On October 7, 2004, he blogged about accidentally flooding his home by leaving the bathtub faucet running too long, only to find a live rattlesnake on the living room floor during the cleanup.
He credits the popularity of his blog to “being around awhile” and to his efforts to post something new every day so there's reason for people to come back. “The surest way to kill your traffic is to leave [the blog] dormant for about 4 days,” he said. “It takes you about 3 months to recover from that.”
He also attributes the success to the fact that more people are reading blogs than ever before. “In medicine, there was a reticence to blogging because physicians were afraid,” he said. “You still have to be careful about blogging about your job and your patients. HIPAA applies in spades. Everything you write down is now going to be recorded forever. Be aware of what you're talking about and who your audience is.”
Dr. Roberts spends up to an hour a day reviewing Web feeds from about 100 medical sites. “That's where I get a lot of ideas for something to write about, or I wind up linking to other people's articles,” he said. He spends up to another hour per day writing an entry for his blog.
Any physician can launch a blog with easy-to-use hosting sites such as the free www.blogger.com
About half of medical blogs are written under a pseudonym, including gruntdoc.com. “I'm probably kidding myself, but I think that lends me just a little bit of freedom,” Dr. Roberts said. “There are other physician bloggers who want their name associated with their blog because they're giving medical advice or want to be an authoritative voice. I understand that, but that's not my style. Look at the styles out there and make your own,” he advised.
Chiming in on Breaking News
Before Dr. Kevin Pho launched his blog in May of 2004, he recalls, he had been intrigued with physician bloggers who offered their opinions on current medical news. He decided on that format for
“There are a lot of times when medical news breaks, and the public and patients don't quite know what to make of it,” said Dr. Pho, an internist who practices in Nashua, N.H. “That interpretation is key. A blog gives instant feedback. A couple of years ago when Vioxx was taken off the market, that was huge news that affected a lot of patients.”
He spends up to 2 hours per day scanning medical news, picking topics to address, and offering quick opinions on them.
“There is definitely a commitment you have to make to run a good blog,” he said. “A lot of times I'll include links to other bloggers who've written opinions. I cover a wide variety of issues but not all of them in depth.”
Each day, about 8,000–10,000 people visit
He feels strongly about defensive medicine and soaring malpractice issues in particular “because they are so polarizing…. Anything about malpractice and defensive medicine brings a lot of traffic.”
Blogging “allows physicians to express how medicine really works, what is frustrating from a physician standpoint. It pulls the curtain back on some of the mysteries of what's going on in the medical world,” he said.
Blog because you want to, he advises, not to jump on the bandwagon. “A good blog only happens when a physician wants to do it, because there are enough pressures that doctors go through,” he said.