Blogging...

Module Five

Why would a patient want to create a blog? What might they gain from this?

Patient’s create blog for a variety of reasons. Often they create blog after they have received a devastating diagnosis or when recovering from a tragic injury. Sometimes, a family blog turns into a blog about a family member’s recovery from illness or injury. For the most part I think blogging about illness is a way patients cope... a way to get the word out about a rare illness... a way to connect with others with the same illness... or a way to get others involved in finding a cure.

Blogs created by patients provide an interesting insight into the patient’s perspective. It is eye-opening to see what a patient thinks is “good” or “bad” care and what really made a difference in their hospital stay.

On that note...

I also think it is important for nonmedical people to realize that patients often have a different perspective on what happened. They sometimes do not have the whole picture and often have limited knowledge into the medical system. If a patient does not think something went exactly right or the way they thought it should have they are going to blog it. They are going to talk about how terrible the hospital, staff, nurses, etc... were. People need to remember this when reading blog posts written from a patient’s point of view and remember that there are two sides to every story.

Why would a health care provider create a blog?

Health care providers create blogs for different reasons. I have read several blogs created by nurses that simply talk about interesting things that happen to them at work. While funny... they provide little but a good laugh. I think blogs can be used for education and patient teaching. They can provide a forum to discuss health care issues through the comments section. Blogs can also help a new facility or provider get the word out about the services they provide. The nice thing about blogs is they are easy to access and free; a nicely designed blog can make a clinic or health care provider seem more personable and human.

What are ethical considerations when blogging on a public website, such as we've used for this class?

Blogging and social networking websites have changed the way people communicate. These outlets gives people a sense of anonymity which leads to a loss of inhibition. Because of this people share personal information they would have never previously talked about or said face-to-face with someone else.

The problem with blogging and social networking is that even if you delete something it is never really gone. If you decide something was inappropriate or malicious and decide to delete it someone could have printed it, taken a screen shot of it, or taken a photograph of it before you had a chance to delete it. Even after you deleted it from your blog or Facebook you still cannot delete it from a person’s memory! People need to be more careful about what they say! We all need to remember the Golden Rule....Do unto others as we would have done unto us!