Blogging & Clinical Cases

DB's Medical Rants had a podcast reflecting on his one millionth hit. He talked about writing -- how his blog initially started off as a way to become a better writer and express himself, but he eventually found more and more people visiting his site. He had a few tips for fledgling bloggers and I found myself thinking about my own blog and motives.

Have I been focusing too much on the audience and the reader and not enough on myself and my own thoughts? What is my purpose for writing?

I haven't been posting as much as I intended to when I first started Not My Second Opinion. There are a number of reasons for this... I initially wanted to share my philosophical musings about various ethical topics in medicine, but I've regrettably found myself with very little time and energy to post on such topics in a meaningful way. My interest in posting something drastically wanes within the first few days... sometimes I get bored with the idea or I no longer think it is postworthy. Perhaps I have high standards of what a medblog constitutes after perusing the quality of my favorite blogs. Most of all, I'm worried about being held accountable for what I say -- which I find highly ironic considering the name i had settled on for this blog.

For the new year of 2007, I am going to make a few changes to my writing tone and style to reflect more of my deeper thoughts. It will be more unvarnished and more rough around the edges, but I hope that this bluntness will encourage more discussion (and be less taxing on the small portion of my brain dedicated to being sagely and wise.)

I'm going to start a new series of entries, inspired by clinicalcases.org. Every week, I will present a case that I've seen in the hospital. It will focus mainly on the clinical aspects of differential diagnosis and reasoning through the physical exam, but I will add my own personal thoughts in at the end as an emphasis for humanism in medicine.


One of my New Year's Resolutions is to devote a few more hours a week to writing. Not necessarily here for you, but for myself as well.