October 4th, 2009 by CodeBlog in Better Health Network, News
4 Comments »
When University of Louisville nursing student Nina Yoder blogged about her experience watching a patient give birth in a post entitled “How I Witnessed the Miracle of Life,” she may have thought she was just blowing off some steam. Well her school saw things very differently.
When school officials read Yoder’s post, which included a description of the baby as a “creep” and “a wrinkly, bluish creature, all Picasso-like and weird, ugly as hell, covered in god knows what, screeching and waving its tentacles in the air,” they moved to expel her from school by calling her into an office, searching her for weapons (apparently because Yoder had separately blogged about her support for the Second Amendment), and informing her she was no longer enrolled at the school. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at code blog - tales of a nurse*
October 3rd, 2009 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Expert Interviews
No Comments »
This morning, I once again get to join in with a group of noted journalists, authors, educators, and all-around people-who-do-things-I-can’t for the annual advisory board meeting of the M.S. in Medical and Science Journalism Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Program founder and current director, Tom Linden, MD, is a Yale- and UCSF-trained physician-journalist with extensive broadcast experience across a series of California television stations. Dr Linden also recognized very early the potential value and pitfalls of the web for communicating health information and published in 1995, with Michelle Kienholz, one of the first consumer guides to medical information on the internet. I also featured Tom here in December 2007 when he launched his own blog.
So today, Dr Linden has asked me to speak to about science and medical blogging but with respect to how it has augmented my own professional career. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
September 11th, 2009 by Emergiblog in Better Health Network, Opinion
No Comments »
I’ve received some emails from nurses who would like to start a blog. Some are a bit nervous about starting, others are not sure how to begin. There are a million sites out there on how to start a blog; in fact, I wrote a post specifically on how to be a “nurse blogtitioner”.
But their emails got me thinking about the blogosphere in general and the most important considerations in starting/maintaining a blog.
1. The blogsosphere can never be saturated.
Think you have nothing to add to the dialog? Think that everything about your topic has been said? Think again. If you aren’t blogging there is still a voice that needs to be heard. What exactly do you bring to the discussion? You! No one has had your experiences or can express your opinions. More importantly, no one else can bring your voice. And unlike a meeting or an email, there are no time limits or physical boundaries to the blogosphere. There is room for everybody, and that means you!
2. The heart of the blogosphere is interactivity.
If you read blogs, you probably leave comments. Comments are the soul of the blogosphere. With them, the blogosphere is a conversation. Without them, the blogosphere is simply a virtual collection of “articles”. By starting a blog, you bring the dialog to your “home turf”, so-to-speak. You are the host/hostess of a virtual “salon”, providing information on your sphere of expertise, initiating the debate and most importantly, learning from those who comment on your posts.
3. The blogosphere is the great equalizer.
There is no hierarchy of blogs. Don’t confuse size with importance. Some blogs may have a million readers a day and some may have ten, but in the blogosphere, no one is “better” than anyone else. Your blog, with that first post, is just as important and just as relevant as anything you see on “Instapundit” or the “Huffington Post”. It’s unique and cannot be replicated, because it is based on your outlook and experiences.
Here are some things to keep in mind as you start your blog:
1. Content is King
Maybe you look at the blogs with the sidebars and the graphics and the ads and the widgets and think, “Man, I don’t know how to do all that!”. You don’t have to do all that! All you have to do is start posting. One post. Later, if you want, you can add a blogroll or a few widgets. But the way to start is to begin writing, and keep writing. People will come for your content. Everything else takes a back seat to that.
2. Promotion, Ur Doin’ it Right
You’ve just put up your first post. A few folks might stumble on your site by accident, but you need to get out the word that you’re on the web. This is where you start promoting your blog. The best way to do this is find a carnival for your niche and submit a post. For those of us in the medblogging community, examples would be Grand Rounds, Change of Shift, Patients for a Moment and The Handover. Make your url part of every email signature and blog comment you send. Write it, and they will come…but they need to know you’re there.
3. Prolific Perfection…Not
Blogging can be addicting, and in a good way. It can be challenging, therapeutic, frustrating, and energizing – all in one post! But…you do not have to be the “perfect” writer. Just find your style and run with it. And while consistent posting makes it easier for readers to find your blog, you control your posting schedule. “Prolific” is what you say it is, be it once a week or once a day. But know this: the more you write, the easier it becomes to write; the more you are interacting with the blogosphere, the more inspiration you will find and the more you will want to write. It’s the blogosphere “circle of life”!
So…if you ask me, should I blog?
I’ll say YES!!!!
Been there, still doing that, and if I can do it, you can do it.
It will clarify your outlook.
It will recharge your batteries.
It will change your life.
Really, the bottom line?
You’ll never know unless you write…
That first post.
*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*
April 5th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in News
No Comments »
My husband Steve and I are at the HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) conference in Chicago. There are about 30,000 attendees this year and the event is being promoted on billboards around the city and in hotels within a 3 mile radius of McCormick Place. Since President Obama has set aside 20 billion dollars for electronic medical records creation and adoption, members of HIMSS have responded with jubilation (and perhaps even some salivation).
The HIMSS conference might strike outsiders as a kind of Star Trek convention without the costumes. The 881 exhibitors in attendance range from health technology giants like GE, Philips, and IBM to small EMR start ups and software engineering companies to facilitate patient care. There is even a “village” on the convention center floor devoted to demonstrating inter-operability of data systems. Standards organizations like NIST, non-profits like CAQH, and government agencies like the CDC are aggregated together at booths on a huge blue carpet – all working together to share information in formats that their computers can all recognize.
As I looked out on this sea of exhibits, the size and scope of the healthcare industry really struck me. I had been to medical conventions at McCormick place before (the AAFP meeting was there last year, for example), but this time it was filled, floor-to-ceiling, with companies that were not (with few exceptions) hospitals, provider groups, pharmaceutical companies or insurers. Instead, this was an entire additional array of companies, all making a living on healthcare.
The exhibit hall opens today at 2pm, and I’ll be at the conference through April 8th, blogging and Twittering (follow me on Twitter here) my thoughts and discoveries. I’ve got my dark suit, comfortable shoes, and pocket protector in place.
May we all live long and prosper.
