Med school blogs--keep it anonymous or reveal your identity?

[lukgirl]

I'm an MS0 and an avid blogger. For the past several years I have kept a personal blog, chronicling my graduate school education, travels, work, and general observations about life. I never felt a need to hide my true identity on this blog, so my name is on the blog.

I very much want to keep blogging my way through medical school to document my journey and the observations, frustrations, joys, and musings I have along the way.

My question is this: do I start a new blog without my name so that I can anonymously blog my way through med school? Or do I put my name "out there"?

I keep going back and forth on this, and I see the pros and cons of each. Are there other med school bloggers out there? What have you done? Do you have any regrets about not making an effort to conceal your identity on your blog?

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[bodonid]

I'm an MS0 and an avid blogger. For the past several years I have kept a personal blog, chronicling my graduate school education, travels, work, and general observations about life. I never felt a need to hide my true identity on this blog, so my name is on the blog.

I very much want to keep blogging my way through medical school to document my journey and the observations, frustrations, joys, and musings I have along the way.

My question is this: do I start a new blog without my name so that I can anonymously blog my way through med school? Or do I put my name "out there"?

I keep going back and forth on this, and I see the pros and cons of each. Are there other med school bloggers out there? What have you done? Do you have any regrets about not making an effort to conceal your identity on your blog?

don't go around talking about your blog (lame) but I don't see any reason to conceal your identity, provided you don't make any controversial remarks. There are a couple bloggers in my class, and they use their names and even pictures.

 

[deuist]

Even if you do conceal your identity, someone will figure out who you are.

 

[fahimaz7]

Any idea of what their link is?

 

[bodonid]

you talking to me? I gots links, if you mean me.

 

[RK.md]

Even if you do conceal your identity, someone will figure out who you are.

deuist is absolutely right. If you're going to blog and want other people to read your material, someone will get curious enough to find out who you are. Might as well take the mystery out of it.

 

[bodonid]

deuist is absolutely right. If you're going to blog and want other people to read your material, someone will get curious enough to find out who you are. Might as well take the mystery out of it.

i thought if I ignored it long enough it would go away, but it hasn't.

WTF is a twitter? how do I make it not exist?

 

[zenlike]

i thought if I ignored it long enough it would go away, but it hasn't.

WTF is a twitter? how do I make it not exist?

Easy: http://www.cbrich.com/supernews-twouble-with-twitters/

 

[jonb12997]

just to be a bit serious... make sure you don't write anything on there that you wouldn't want your future potential program director to read...

 

[bodonid]

just to be a bit serious... make sure you don't write anything on there that you wouldn't want your future potential program director to read...

are you referencing anything in this thread? I can be a bit silly at times, but I don't see anything wrong with that...

edit- oh, nevermind. you mean the bloggers.

 

[Bartelby]

just to be a bit serious... make sure you don't write anything on there that you wouldn't want your future potential program director to read...

Or anything you wouldn't want the patients/families who go to the hospital to see. Stuff can get back to you, even if it's anonymous. Don't forget HIPAA!

 

[SouthernSurgeon]

I'm going to vote for the anonymous route. And actually, if it were an option, I'd vote for the "don't do it" route, probably. But then again, I'm one of those slightly paranoid people who is debating deleting my facebook account prior to going through the residency application process.

To summarize some of the issues raised above:
-Your school admin may not be too happy about it. They can't really do anything to you if you keep it clean, but you don't really want that scrutiny or want to be on the bad side of the deans.
-You need to be very very careful including any information about patients that could be considered "identifiable"
-You need to be sure that you are comfortable with the knowledge that PDs could find and read it.

Whether you like blogging or not is not really relevant, and you may find it absurd to think that someone would get worked up over your harmless blog posts, but most admins (med school and residency) are still very gun shy about this stuff, and would probably consider it a negative rather than a positive.

 

[VMSmith]

I'd vote for anonymizing it. Conceal as much as possible which school you're at as well (though anyone familiar with your school will easily be able to tell where you are).

Unless you are a fantastic writer, blogging confers you few advantages and some significant drawbacks, as southernIM mentioned above.

With residency applications, you want to be able to put your best face forward. While not all PDs will be tech savvy enough to find your blog, some definitely will if you post your real name on it. Are you totally comfortable with your potential future employers being able to read all of the thoughts you've posted (and will be posting) online, and drawing conclusions about you based on what you post?

Actually that goes for SDN as well. Haha.

 

[RK.md]

Since I haven't started medical school yet, I've tried to focus on blogging about neutral topics - what you can expect at a medical interview, hot topics in healthcare, the future of medicine, etc. It's hard to find topics which don't really step on anyone's toes, so I try to provide a brief summary of my opinion and eagerly await discussion by my readership via comments. I don't see why good debate should be hindered out of fear of someone important reading the info and holding it against you... especially if the opinions are justified. That's just me. Lol, one of my peers thinks that I didn't get into UT Southwestern because some adcoms must have found my pro-Baylor Med blog posts. Oh well, that's just me.

 

[VMSmith]

Since I haven't started medical school yet, I've tried to focus on blogging about neutral topics - what you can expect at a medical interview, hot topics in healthcare, the future of medicine, etc.

If this is the sort of thing you blog about, then being anonymous (or...um...nonymous?) probably doesn't matter.

 

[thechad]

Just don't blog at all, it's lame. 🙁

 

[lukgirl]

Hmmmmm...I still haven't been convinced one way or the other. I certainly wouldn't want my blog to come back and bite me and prevent me from getting into a good residency program, but I also don't anticipate writing anything highly controversial, directly attacking any one or any school, or anything like that.

I've been reading some blogs written by med students the past few months and enjoy the insight they give into the life of a med student. The ones I like best happen to be the ones where the blogger's identity is revealed (e.g. The Island Med Student, Over My Med Body, and the entries written by med students on The Differential). I think medical blogging is becoming more common and its value being recognized. Whether or not other people think blogging is lame, it's something I enjoy doing and I do it for myself more than for other people. So I am going to keep blogging.

Right now I'm leaning towards keeping my current blog, which does not conceal my identity, but if there's anyone out there who wants to convince me to do otherwise, let's hear it!

 

[Ashers]

I'm going to vote for the anonymous route. And actually, if it were an option, I'd vote for the "don't do it" route, probably. But then again, I'm one of those slightly paranoid people who is debating deleting my facebook account prior to going through the residency application process.

To summarize some of the issues raised above:
-Your school admin may not be too happy about it. They can't really do anything to you if you keep it clean, but you don't really want that scrutiny or want to be on the bad side of the deans.
-You need to be very very careful including any information about patients that could be considered "identifiable"
-You need to be sure that you are comfortable with the knowledge that PDs could find and read it.

Whether you like blogging or not is not really relevant, and you may find it absurd to think that someone would get worked up over your harmless blog posts, but most admins (med school and residency) are still very gun shy about this stuff, and would probably consider it a negative rather than a positive.

Change your privacy settings. I thought about inactivating my account, but you can make it so only your friends can search for you on Facebook. I also went through all my photo albums, notes, etc., and made it so "Only Friends" can see them... none of this "everyone" stuff.

My friends and I found this effective.

I don't know about blogs... I only kept one briefly while I was studying abroad, but it had my name on it.

 

[DrJosephKim]

I suggest that you don't conceal. Write with common sense and don't write about anything that will get you into trouble.

 

[Mr hawkings]

I suggest that you don't conceal. Write with common sense and don't write about anything that will get you into trouble.

And make sure on those days when someone pisses you off on the floor, dont use your blog to vent. You might go too far and say too much

 

[deuist]

I suggest that you don't conceal. Write with common sense and don't write about anything that will get you into trouble.

But all of the good blogs are anonymous with stuff that would otherwise get the author in trouble.

 

[neuroprotector]

Go for anonymous. If you ever want to write about a patient encounter (which you will), you owe it to them to be as nonspecific as possible, since simply changing names often isn't that obscuring.

I also find myself doing a lot of stupid stuff in clinic (like telling female patients that I'm going to feel their chest for a thrill, or getting kicked in the bojangles after checking a patellar reflex), so it's best to keep that from getting out.