Medical Blogging: Good or Bad?

Submitted by Dr. Gwenn Is In

As a medical blogger, and one whose blog does well with a solid readership and positive comments, I found this article by HealthDay very interesting. The article discusses issues with some medical blogs and patient privacy. But, this isn’t a new issue. And, is an issue that medical bloggers have addressed among ourselves - something that was interestingly not even noted in the article. So, the following comment by Dr. Tara Lagu isn’t accurate:

“Unfortunately, no professional organization has taken the initiative to provide guidance on this issue. As the number of medical blogs grows, professional organizations, medical educators, and the blogging community must address the challenge of this new medium by setting guidelines and standards for what is appropriate.”

While there are no official standards by profession organizations yet, this is an issue actively talked about on the professional level at meetings such as the National Association of Medical Communicators and the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Communications and Media. And, medical bloggers ourselves have already come together to provide standards among ourselves. A couple years ago when it was obvious we needed to do so when a few medical blogs crossed some obvious ethical lines, a discuss occurred an the Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics was created.

This has become the standard for medical and health blogging and has now been extended to include a patient blogging code of ethics because of the popularity of many excellent blogs by patients. I have it on my blog and most of the top medical bloggers, anonymous and nonanomymous alike, have it on theirs. It emerged due to a collective need to fix some significant problems many of us saw in health blogs, the very ones mentioned in the HealthDay article actually, and to have standards we can all be held accountable to. You’ll see this logo on blogs who agree to uphold this code of ethics:

The code we all agree which includes not violating patient privacy, is:

1. “Clear representation of perspective - readers must understand the training and overall perspective of the author of a blog. Certainly bloggers can have opinions on subjects outside of their training, and these opinions may be true, but readers must have a place to look on a blog to get an idea of where this author is coming from. This also encompasses the idea of the distinction between advertisement and content. This does not preclude anonymous blogging, but it asks that even anonymous bloggers share the professional perspective from which they are blogging.
2. Confidentiality - Bloggers must respect the nature of the relationship between patient and medical professionals and the clear need for confidentiality. All discussions of patients must be done in a way in which patients’ identity cannot be inferred. A patient’s name can only be revealed in a way that is in keeping with the laws that govern that practice (HIPPA, Informed Consent).
3. Commercial Disclosure - the presence or absence of commercial ties of the author must be made clear for the readers. If the author is using their blog to pitch a product, it must be clear that they are doing that. Any ties to device manufacturer and/or pharmaceutical company ties must be clearly stated.
4. Reliability of Information - citing sources when appropriate and changing inaccuracies when they are pointed out
5. Courtesy - Bloggers should not engage in personal attacks, nor should they allow their commenters to do so. Debate and discussion of ideas is one of the major purposes of blogging. While the ideas people hold should be criticized and even confronted, the overall purpose is a discussion of ideas, not those who hold ideas.”

It is always good to have this issue aired. But, had Dr. Lagu’s group and the HealthDay reporters done their research just a bit deeper, they would have seen that the medical blogging community has been a step ahead of them for years. The last thing any of us is for our attempt to provide clarity of information with our blogs to cause harm. And, if we do, we want to be called on it.

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