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Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds is a weekly summary of the best health blog posts on the Internet. Each week a different blogger takes turns hosting Grand Rounds, and summarizing the best submissions for the week. The schedule for Grand Rounds is available at the Better Health Blog and at Blogborygmi.com. Both Dr. Val Jones and Dr. Nick Genes coordinate the schedule and identify appropriate hosts for Grand Rounds. Medscape.com features weekly interviews with new hosts of Grand Rounds. MedPage Today powers the Grand Rounds newsletter.

Grand Rounds was originally established by Emergency Medicine physician, Nicholas Genes in September, 2003. His concept was to highlight and capture the best medical blog posts in one place each week. The rotating nature of the hosts for Grand Rounds promotes community awareness of new bloggers, and encourages cross linkage to more content.

Grand Rounds is the oldest and most popular medical blog “carnival” on the Internet. Under the stewardship of Drs. Jones and Genes, we anticipate that Grand Rounds will remain a pillar of the health blogging community, enjoyed by healthcare professionals and patients alike.

Would you like to host Grand Rounds at your blog? Contact: blogborygmi.com

Would you like to promote Grand Rounds on your blog? Get a Grand Rounds button here: http://getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/themes/getting-better/ads.html

Grand Rounds Submission Guidelines

Submitting your blog post to Grand Rounds is as easy as 1-2-3.

1. Go to the Grand Rounds calendar and locate the host blog for the upcoming edition.
2. Click on the host’s link and read their instructions for submitting your post. Their instructions are usually listed in a recent blog post.
3. Email the host prior to their deadline (usually Sunday night before the Tuesday Grand Rounds). Include the URL of your blog post, your blog name, and your blog’s URL in your email. Put “Grand Rounds Submission” in the title of your email.

What kind of blog posts are appropriate for submission to Grand Rounds?

Anything with a health or healthcare theme. Suggestions include:

• Patient encounters — something that made you laugh, cry, or gaze into the abyss
• A profile of someone in medicine
• Medical education — experiences, insight, generalizations
• Implications of a new basic science discovery
• Commentary on a new study — what it means for patients and practitioners
  • why this new test / device / pill will save us / bankrupt us / kill us in our sleep
• Commentary on health care delivery
  • an experience you’ve had with a limitation or success of the system
  • your theories about what would improve access, outcomes
  • something new and interesting about insurance, malpractice, regulations
  • drug companies, and why they’re so evil and / or saving lives
  • why recent data about health care is all wrong / fine as is / not discouraging enough

Rules:

• One entry per blogger
• Recent posts between 400 and 1000 words are preferred
• Posts are to be written for a general audience (more on this below)

Advice from the founder of Grand Rounds, Dr. Nick Genes:

Remember, the target audience here is NOT other medical bloggers, or people in the health care industry. It’s the educated but non-medical readers coming from general-interest blogs. So write for that audience, if only for this one post (even if your blog is about echocardiography). The idea is to introduce the wider world to the growing medical blogosphere — the doctors, nurses, students, administrators, EMTs, techs, and patients who blog.

It’s the host’s discretion as to what gets included. In addition to linking to your posts, hosts may provide groan-inducing puns, and snarky comments, that readers have come to expect and enjoy. It’s nothing personal.

If you’re looking for more guidance, check out other linkfests such as Carnival of the Vanities. Grand Rounds was conceived as along those lines, like a Carnival of the Caregivers.

Frequently asked questions:

1. Is Grand Rounds just limited to bloggers in the health care field? No – Hosts may consider any medical-related post. The point of Grand Rounds is to promote the nascent medical blogosphere, and submissions from health-related blogs will take priority.
2. I’m a doctor / nurse / researcher / student / EMT / health care economist / patient who writes mostly about gardening / dating / reality television. Will you link to my post? Maybe, if it’s medically related. And very few blogs are 100% medicine. Submissions from mostly health-focused blogs will take priority.
3. How do I become a host of Grand Rounds? Send an email to Nick Genes (you can find his contact info at blogborygmi.com) and request to be considered as a future host. Include a link to your blog. Host bloggers must have been blogging regularly for at least 6 months, have a health theme, demonstrate good writing skills, professionalism, and respect for scientific medicine. If your blog meets those requirements (and is approved by Nick or Val) they’ll contact you via email to schedule your host date.
4. Can I have a Grand Rounds button for my blog? If you’ve ever hosted Grand Rounds in the past, you may certainly display the Grand Rounds button on your blog. The button links to the Grand Rounds calendar and archives. Get the button here: http://getbetterhealth.com/wp-content/themes/getting-better/ads.html

About The Hosts Of Grand Rounds

Val Jones, MD

Val Jones, M.D., is the CEO of Better Health, LLC, a medical blogger network and education company. Most recently she was the Senior Medical Director of Revolution Health, a consumer health portal with over 120 million page views per month in its network.

Dr. Jones is the author of the popular blog, “Getting Better with Dr. Val”, which won The Best New Medical Blog award in 2007 and was a finalist in the health policy and ethics category for 2008.

Dr. Jones has been quoted by various major media outlets, including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the LA Times. She has been a guest on over 20 different radio shows, and was featured on CBS News. Dr. Jones volunteers as a rehabilitation medicine physician at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and is a graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Nick Genes, MD, PhD

Nicholas Genes, MD, PhD, is a resident in the Emergency Medicine program at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He received a bachelor’s degree in science from Brown University, where he first developed his interests in medicine, research, and writing. After college, he enrolled in the MD/PhD program at the University of Massachusetts, pursuing a medical degree while studying chondrocyte mechanotransduction in Dr. Charles Vacanti’s laboratory for tissue engineering.

In the course of writing a freelance article, he discovered the world of medical Weblogs, and he has been active in this nascent community ever since. In 2004, he founded “Grand Rounds,” a weekly compilation of the best medical blogs, hosted by a different blogger each week. He writes about that project in a weekly column, “Pre-Rounds,” for the Medscape Med Students site. He also writes regularly on his own blog, blogborygmi.com, and is a partner in medgadget.com, a blog about emerging medical technologies.

Keep In Touch With Grand Rounds:

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/grandrounds
Join our Facebook fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grand-Rounds/390746320612?ref=ts
Subscribe to our RSS: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GrandRoundsBlogCarnival
See our Google Calendar:  http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=2airg0a748unsn5v16f4b3o15o%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/New_York