Grand Rounds: Bettor’s Guide to the Key Bowl Games in Health Care

The latest edition of Grand Rounds is up at Pizaazz, and we get a mention!

My First Blog Award

(Originally Posted 12/6/2010, Updated 16/6/2010)
To be honest, I am not big on Blog Awards. I don't blog to receive an award, and I don't pay much attention if someone else has an award. Mainly I think it is because most of the time I think they are some junky thing made up by someone in order to drum up links back to themselves and raise their search ranking.

Call me a cynic, but I think the vast majority of awards given out are just a marketing exercise, rather than something issued by fellow bloggers to recognise truly outstanding other blogs. It is probably more productive to just post comments and provide links back to them - but being the infrequent blogger and less frequent reader that I am, laziness and lack of time stops me from doing so as often as I would like.

I think I was listed as a finalist in something a while ago... Where was it? Can't remember.

Anyway, I think this is the first time I have been sent a badge to pretend that I won something for blogging. I know that I am being used, but what the heck?

This one is from medicalbillingandcoding.org, presumably a web site that either wants to:

1. make commissions from referring people to medical billing and coding courses, or 
2. a web site that wants to rapidly build up as much traffic as possible and then sell the domain to some adult site for quick cash.

Then again, who am I to say no to flashy web badges? So here you go:

 

Admittedly, the first one is a bit tacky and self-promotional, but the second is nicely generic. Too bad they don't have transparent GIF or PNG versions (I subsequently found a transparent PNG). They will obviously need to rebuild the website and links if they ever give out more awards next year.

If you wish to follow the links then you can enter the following URLs to see what it is all about, but don't blame me if the domain name has been sold on and you get viruses, malware, and a free subscription to Foot-Lover's Weekly:

• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/topmedical/
  
• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/top-blogs/
  
• http://www.awardingtheweb.com

(Update 16/6/2010)

Interestingly I have found these guys have been working on several other "Top Blog" Awards, such as:

• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/top_allergy/
• http://www.onlinecollegesanduniversities.com/top_ethics/
• http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/top_diet/

It must be a successful SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) technique, associating your website with other quality, high-readership websites (well, except for this one, of course). Presumably all the recipients are so grateful that they give links back to the award-presenter.

Since I am not convinced of the benevolence of these awards I am, on principle, not giving a direct backlink... does that make me even lower than a cheapskate? Can a web award be taken away after it has been given? Or will my ungratefulness cause my award to surreptitiously disappear into the ether? Well, for the sake of posterity, I suppose should keep a screenshot of my award here, in all of its transient, web-based glory.

nhsblogdoc retires from blogging

It is with great sadness that I note that Dr John Crippen aka nhsblogdoc has decided to stop blogging, and furthermore remove all of his previous posts.

He has been a major force in medical blogging, and inspired me to begin blogging in the first place. Numerous posts by me have been stimulated by his lead.

• I don't understand this
• Hospitals Behaving Badly
• Sister, I'm Speechless

It is certainly the end of an era, and I am especially sad that I have only noticed this fact 3 months down the track due to my inability to keep up with the medical blogging scene.

The impact of his blogging is reflected by the farewells that he has received, and I humbly add myself to the list of bloggers sorry to see him go.

• NHSBLOGDOC. Dr John Crippen - Ward87
• Farewell, friend - The Jobbing Doctor
• Crippen would have loved it - Dr Grumble
• nhsblogdoc - GruntDoc
• And now for something completely different - The Road to Hellth...
• Dr Crippen has gone, please come back? - Northern Doc

Sadly, there are those that are happy to see him gone:

• Letter to the Guardian Re: Dr. Crippen - Dancing with the Sandman
• Centre for Nursing Advocacy

But he lives on, even if only in the faint memories of the internet:

• NHSBlogDoc Cached - UK Web Archive
• NHSBlogDoc Archive - Wayback Machine

Dr Crippen - hopefully we will see you reappear, either as yourself, as a new identity, or if nothing else then in the memory of those who continue to blog, and may our influence and spirit continue to guide us to incisive, critical, entertaining and humorous medical blogging.

Grand Rounds v5(51) is up

Grand Rounds is up at Medic 999. Help! I'm being flooded with links!!!

SurgeXperiences 305 at Amanzimtoti

The next SurgeXperiences 305 is up at Amanzimtoti. Go, now!

Surgical Principles of Bongi

This is a series of entertaining and very true posts from Bongi over at Other Things Amanzi:

1. to swear does in fact help.
   
2. fear nothing but fear itself.
   
3. all bleeding stops.
   
4. enjoy.
   
5. it is in fact always the surgeon's fault.
   
6. take a moment.
   
7. break the tension, don't add to it.
   
8. we do it to impress the chicks.

Clearly Bongi is more successful at impressing chicks because when I did what he did they all went off for debriefing and counselling.

Grand Rounds v5(31) is up

The Birthday Edition of Grand Rounds is up at Diabetes Mine. This blog scores an entry yet again - woohoo!

Next edition will be at SixUntilMe. Just don't try saying it with a New Zealand accent. Because it would be weird telling you to go check out "Sex 'n Tell Me".

Wellsphere / Healthblogger Doesn't Like Me?

Along with many other health-related bloggers, I have received numerous invitations to join the Healthblogger / Wellsphere network from a Dr Geoffrey Rutledge.

Here is an example (copies of Dr Rutledge's mail-merged posts are commonplace on the Internet, so I do not think I am betraying any trust by reproducing his email here):

Hi ,

Congratulations again for being invited to join the HealthBlogger network. You are just one quick step away from becoming part of the premier network of the best health bloggers! All you have to do is click here:

URL REMOVED

Set your account name/password, and we'll take it from there. We'll connect your blog and begin republishing your articles so they are available to the entire Wellsphere audience.

If you have any difficulty with this process, or if you have any questions, don't hesitate to send me an email to EMAIL REMOVED, or call me at TELEPHONE REMOVED.

I look forward to welcoming you to the HealthBlogger network!

Cheers,
Geoff
--

Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD
Chief Medical Information Officer
The HealthCentral Network, Inc.
http://www.wellsphere.com

Here is a copy of the invitation we sent you last week:

Hi ,

My name is Dr. Geoff Rutledge, and I am delighted to invite you to join Wellsphere’s HealthBlogger Network, the world’s premier network of health writers, including nearly 2,000 of the Web’s leading health bloggers! We carefully reviewed your blog, and based on the high quality of your writing, the frequency of your posts, and your passion for helping others, we think you would be a great addition to the Network. As a member of the HealthBlogger Network, you’ll enjoy the greatly expanded reach and exposure to Wellsphere’s more than 4 million monthly unique visitors, innovative special features and functionality for your blog, and an exclusive badge to recognize you as one of the Web’s leading health bloggers. You’ll also have the opportunity to share tips and advice about blogging with your fellow health-focused bloggers. Once you join, we’ll begin promoting you and your blog as a great source of health knowledge and support, featuring you in rotation on our homepage (www.wellsphere.com), republishing your posts on Wellsphere, giving you special status on Wellsphere and linking back to your blog. THERE IS NO COST FOR YOU TO JOIN and YOU RETAIN OWNERSHIP of the content that you allow Wellsphere to republish. To be clear, your content is yours, and you are free to do whatever you choose with it.

Let me tell you a bit about me and about Wellsphere. I'm a physician who has taught and practiced Internal and Emergency Medicine for over 25 years at Harvard and Stanford medical schools, and am passionate about helping people get the information and support they need to be healthier. I'm now the Chief Medical Information Officer at Wellsphere.com, where I manage the HealthBlogger Network. Wellsphere, the fastest-growing consumer health website, is revolutionizing the way people find and share health and healthy living information and support. We’ve recently merged with The HealthCentral Network, Inc. (www.healthcentral.com), and together we’re now serving more than 10 million people a month!

I would like to invite you to join the HealthBlogger Network as a featured blogger in the General Medicine Community. Once you join the HealthBlogger Network, we will automatically republish the blog posts that you’ve already written and the ones you write in the future (so you don’t have to re-post them yourself, and there’s no extra work for you!). We will feature them not only on the community pages of the site, but also on numerous relevant WellPages, where we give users a comprehensive view of expert information, news, videos, local resources, and member postings on topics you write about. Each of your articles that are re-published on Wellsphere will include a link back to your blog, and your Wellsphere profile page will show your special status as a featured blogger on Wellsphere (and will include another link back to your blog). By connecting to the Wellsphere platform, you will greatly expand the audience for your postings, attract additional readers to your blog, and receive much deserved recognition for your efforts to improve peoples’ lives.

You will also receive from us a special badge for your blog recognizing you as a Top Health Blogger, and gain access to features and functionality for your blog that we’ve created especially for members in the HealthBlogger Network, including a custom tailored Health Knowledge Finder search widget, a Wellevation widget that provides daily motivational tips for your members, and a Wellternatives widget that offers nutrition information and healthier suggestions at popular chain restaurants.

It’s easy and free to join the Health Blogger Network! Just reply to this message to let me know you would like to participate.

Congratulations on being selected to participate in the Health Blogger Network! If you have any questions, please feel free to send me an email to Dr.Rutledge@wellsphere.com

Good health,
Geoff
--
Geoffrey W. Rutledge MD, PhD
Chief Medical Information Officer
EMAIL REMOVED
TELEPHONE REMOVED
http://www.wellsphere.com
The HealthCentral Network, Inc.

Sounds pretty good, hey? Well, I have done some poking around and Healthblogger does not seem all that popular amongst some health bloggers. For example:

• The Wellsphere Blogging Controversy by John Grohol
  
• A Different Perspective on the Sale of Wellsphere by Trisha Torrey
  
• How The Health Blogosphere Was Scammed by Dr Val

So I decided that if I were to consider syndicating my blog I had better be clear about what I was willing to agree to. I sent Dr Rutledge an email:

Dear Dr Rutledge:

Thankyou for your invitation to join the HealthBlogger / Wellsphere Network. I would be willing to allow the HealthBlogger network to use my blog content on a number of specific conditions.

1. For the purposes of this agreement, YOU refers to Dr Geoffrey Rutledge, HealthBlogger, Wellsphere, and any related parties engaged in business with the above organisations. MY BLOG refers to material published by me on the blog site at http://papermask.blogspot.com.

2. All communication with me should be conducted via this email account. I can give no assurance that correspondence received via other means is from me. Any payment to me should be conducted via a secure anonymous escrow facility which I will advise via this email account on acceptance of this agreement.

3. YOU may only use the first paragraph, or approximately 255 characters, whichever is shorter of any post and must place a direct link back to MY BLOG post entry at the end of that excerpt. This is the limit of my Blogger RSS feed and YOU may not use any other means to source content from MY BLOG.

4. YOU may be granted a temporary non-exclusive license for 6 months to use such content where it is used only on the WELLSPHERE.COM domain. Such license is not transferable and material cannot be republished outside the WELLSPHERE.COM domain or further licensed to another third party.

5. I reserve the right to withdraw permission for my material to be used at any time. Should my permission be withdrawn all material must be removed within 2 weeks of my email notification being sent.

6. There is to be no censorship, vetting, modification, or limitation of material which is reproduced. All supplied material must be published as is, and not subject to editorial adjustment.

7. 25% of any income raised directly or indirectly from use of my content (eg advertising revenue on pages featuring my posts) should be forwarded to me or a charity of my choosing, with adequate evidence produced to my satisfaction of such payment.

8. YOU must not make any attempt to expose my identity or compromise my anonymity. Should such attempt occur then YOU shall make payment to me a sum of USD$100,000 and any consequential damages related to damage to my employment, career or reputation.

9. YOU must not make any claim as to my identity or qualifications, other than what is publicly available via MY BLOG.

10. YOU recognise that material featured on MY BLOG may be incorrect, untrue, fictional, or misleading, and that this may be either intentional, or unintended. It may also contain material which is sourced from other parties whose permission or right to reproduce may not extend to YOU. I do not take any responsibility for the consequences of reproduction or misrepresentation of material sourced from or via MY BLOG.

11. Should there be any breach of these conditions, YOU shall make payment to me or my nominated charity a sum of USD$100 on each occasion of such breach (eg each post which is reproduced after withdrawal of my permission, and each modification within each post against my direction, and each omission of a post against my direction). Each unique URL from which my posts are accessible giving rise to such a breach would be considered an individual breach.

12. I shall not be responsible for any liability, damages, or consequential loss incurred by YOU or any other party as a result of material reproduced on your network.

13. I retain the right to publicly comment on any arrangements made with YOU and reproduce correspondence between us both on MY BLOG and elsewhere.

14. YOU do not have reciprocal rights to publicly comment or reproduce correspondence with me without my express permission, unless such material has already been publicly reproduced by me on MY BLOG.

15. YOU will not require me to agree to any other contract(s) related to reproduction of my material, and that should YOU have records of any other conditions or contracts which have been agreed to outside of this email they will be invalid and considered null and void.

If you agree to these conditions, please let me know and I will make appropriate arrangements. Please note that in the interests of transparency I will be posting my conditions and your response to these conditions to my blog. Should you not wish me to directly quote your response to these conditions then please let me know.

Kind Regards,

Sheepish.

Unfortunately, Dr Rutledge and his team have chosen not to respond to my email. Is this a sign of my unpopularity??? Or am I being unfair with my conditions???

SurgeXperiences 221 at Suture for a Living

The current edition of SurgeXperiences is up at Suture for a Living

Next edition will be hosted by Other Things Amanzi.

Grand Rounds v5(30) is up

Pharmamotion is hosting Grand Rounds this week. Head over there to check it out - even this blog gets a mention this week!

Next week, it will be the turn of Diabetes Mine. Get your entries in early!

Grand Rounds v5(29) is up

Grand Rounds Vol 5 Issue 29 is up at Getting Closer to Myself. Make sure you go and check it up for a roundup of the medical blogosphere!

Helpcure.Com is a Fraudulent Scam

I can't make it much simpler than that, can I?

It is commonplace that blogs are used for comment spam - some would consider it a valid and respectable technique for search engine optimisation (or SEO, in geek-speak). This is basically where you try to drum up links to your website by posting a whole bunch of comments on various other (more respectable) websites or blogs in the hope that search engines like Google will start ranking your website more highly.

I normally delete such comment spam as soon as I see them as they are usually for things like cheap, illegal, and probably counterfeit Viagra, Cialis, Horny Goat Weed, Rose Hip Oil, or Sniffing Glue etcetera. In this case, though, not only did I find the comment transiently amusing, but after having some time to think about it I found the fact that it was so effective for this website quite offensive.

Let me explain to you how this works:

1. Let us say you are the author of a particularly informative and well-respected blog, who shall remain nameless.


2. One day you receive a comment on one of your blog posts along the lines of "Hey great post! Here is a gratuitously ego-stroking comment just to see whether or not you are paying attention to the comments posted on your blog."


3. You might see a few of these trickle in, and before you know it, you are flooded by more comments: "Hey great post! Here is another gratuitously ego-stroking comment so that your first instinct is to approve this comment and secondly you don't notice the segue to another website that is connected to your blog by the most tenuous of links, such as this fantastic web page at http://fredbrunel.com/journal/2007/10/comment-spam-explained/


4. If you pay attention, you might notice that the comment on your blogpost might look remarkably similar to comments on another web page, or another blog, or that other blog you never read. You might then stumble across more websites with the same comment, even ones that you might normally respect.

Furthermore, you are highly likely to discover that the target website is full of fraudulent bullshit designed to fleece unsuspecting, desperate and vulnerable people of their hard-earned cash. For example, Helpcure.com says:

THIS IS HOLISTIC TREATMENT ! WHAT IS THIS?

THIS IS A COMBINATION OF A BIO MAGNETIC CARD WITH BIO MAGNETIC TAPE ON THE CARD- (OR BIO MAGNETIC TABLETS ALSO CAN BE USED) THIS WILL CREATE NEGATIVE CHARGE IN CD4 CELLS- TO PUSH VIRUS OUT THROUGH BIO MAGNETIC FORCE AND HERBALS TO ENHANCE IMMUNITY -TO PROTECT YOU FURTHER. NO SIDE EFFECTS AND NO PROBLEMS.

Are you nuts???? You are seriously asserting that a credit card will push viral particles out of my body through magnetic force? You bet this is holistic therapy, because I can tell you which hole you can swipe your card through.

If you have HIV (or indeed any illness) please do not fall for this load of codswallop. Just listen to your immunologist and infectious diseases physician. Read the FDA tips on how to spot a health fraud. Discuss any change in treatment with your specialist before lauching into anything. Use your brain and a modicum of commonsense.

If only I could get 1000 other blogs to link here with comment about the truth of HELPCURE.COM, then maybe the Number 1 Search Entry for "HELPCURE + HIV" will say "Helpcure.Com is a fraud". So once more for the benefit of the Google spiderbots: HELPCURE.COM IS A FRAUDULENT SCAM.

Grand Rounds (4) 38 and SurgeXperiences

Dr Crippen at NHS Blog Doctor posted this edition, and along with QuietusLeo at The Sandman, kindly included my last post on organ donation.

Please go and read them - they are fascinating links as usual.

SurgeXperiences Carnival 122

It’s been eye-opening to read submissions from all over the medical blogosphere this fortnight. This is the first blog carnival I have hosted, and I now appreciate the amount of effort that previous hosts have put into it.

A few weeks ago, a young man presented with a chicken bone lodged transversely in his distal rectum. After the ED registrar and consultant had spent over an hour trying to remove it, I thought it would be easiest to cut it in half. Dr Wes felt that he had a similar epiphany in MacGyver Moments in Medicine.

I’m not sure whether this qualifies as pornography or a fetish post, but Make Mine Trauma at IntraopOrate describes in Oh Say Can You See her secret fantasy of seeing her internal organs. Hey, anything that gets your rocks off, baby. ;-)

MB Herrera at Life, Money & Development describes in Natural Recipe for a Healthy Prostate some Level 6 evidence for relieving BPH. Personally, I think it is the result of too much masturbation... but you can't stop human nature, can you?

When I first read Øystein’s blog I thought: “This guy has too much time on his hands.” I quickly realised that he is not just a voyeur, but films operations for a living. His submission was "Filming surgery with camcorders". My tip - never let a sound recordist into your theatre, and if they do, insist that they remove that hairy dog from their microphone, unless you are happy for your patient to have their wound infected with bizarre and rare bacteria or fungi.

In a post reminiscent of poor Otto in Helen Palmer's "A Fish Out Of Water", TherapyDoc submitted "The End Stage" where she seems to have reached a zen moment with her fishy charge.

Bongi almost didn't make it in with Surgical Ego because he didn't flatter me enough, but I felt that I had to prove him wrong. Therefore I'm also listing his other submission No Wining about the trials and tribulations of being berated in a unit meeting. Don't worry, I once had the same experience (and criticism) after doing a trauma thoracotomy in ED. May I refer you to this article? It has helped me enormously.

Dr Deb writes about a man who apparently underwent hand surgery without any anaesthesia, placing himself into a trance only. Honestly, I didn’t find this very interesting. It left me feeling rather numb.

Suthacha_Xiang Mei writes about her first surgical rotation. It's always good to see some enthusiasm in our medical students, locally and globally.

Thanks everyone for a great range of submissions, and I wish you all the best in your blogging lives – and please keep reading my blog, too! Please keep reading SurgeXperiences and the next carnival will be hosted in a fortnight at The Sandman. Post submissions here.

SurgeXperiences 19

As every new inbound link is precious to me (mainly because I don't have that many) I have agreed to host one of these Blog Carnival thingies in the next few weeks. This is somewhat of a problem since I tend to just write what I think, and don't go around reading other people's blogs all the time unless there is something specific that catches my eye. Does that make me a hypocrite?

In any case, I suppose the fact that I am hosting a Blog Carnival means I am obliged to start promoting it. And I will have to read all these submissions.

So, here you go: SurgeXperiences Issue 19 is out at Marianas Eye. You can view it here.

SurgExperiences, 10th Edition is up

Thanks to Jeffrey, this blog has caught the eye of Dr. Alice over at Cut On The Dotted Line who hosted the 10th Edition of the SurgExperiences Blog Carnival recently.

If you are interested in surgical blogs, then feel free to check it out here.

Grand Rounds v4.10

I've been a bit tardy in blogging due to work commitments, but The Paper Mask has made it into Grand Rounds again!

This week's Grand Rounds is hosted by Prudence MD.

Make sure you check it out!

PagingDr is down

Unfortunately something has gone wrong with the PagingDr forums. I don't know what, but my eyelid is starting to twitch from withdrawal symptoms.

This is from Bel at Audaci.net

Breaking my silence to let you all know that the Paging Dr forum has been put into maintenance mode temporarily to protect the posts. A user deleted 400 posts in the space of nine minutes, and not just their own, which says to me they either don't know how to run a script properly or they're just malicious. Either way we don't care, we just don't want anymore deletions. The forum will come back up once we've spoken to Proboards and figured out how to protect its integrity. Would the other forum users with blogs also post this up so other forum users will know what's happened? We're not prepared to send a mass email just yet for other reasons.

Hopefully it will be up and running soon.

Clinicians Speak Out

I was recently alerted by Dr Clare Skinner (who features in this article in the AFR) as to the existence of this website, Clinicians Speak Out. To be honest, I am not 100% certain what the purpose of the website is, as it is set up like a blog, but seems to act a little like a noticeboard and a discussion forum in one. Nevertheless, the premise behind the organisation running it is straightforward - public hospitals need to be run with a clear vision and purpose. Underlying issues need to be defined and addressed, and covering up one crisis after another does not solve these issues. Attention needs to be paid to long-term planning, not short term politics.

Kudos to those brave health professionals who are willing to speak out and put their names to their concerns about the public health system. Bravo to you, and may you have a positive influence on the administration of public health. I most certainly do not have enough courage to shelve my anonymity at this time.

While the predominant focus is on public hospitals in the Sydney area (no doubt all the controversy about RNSH has brought this to the forefront, as well as the basic fact that the current NSW Health system is one of the most rundown, bureaucratic, paperwork-driven, responsibility-shedding and accountability-avoiding administrations I have every had the sad privilege of working in), every other public hospital system in Australia deserves the same attention.

So congratulations, doctors, nurses, and other health professionals at Clinicians Speak Out, may you continue to fight the good fight. I am sure that when you have some content worth reading, medical web-surfers will flock to you... in the meantime, I'll just try to boost your pageload stats because I know how good it feels. (smile)

gasboy is down

gasboy07 from My ETHEReal Adventures (link removed) has taken down his blog.

Unfortunately he has been persuaded to cease blogging:

Thank you everyone who has been visiting my blog in the past - as you have noticed I have had to remove it, based on advice from a few people. It is unfortunate, but such is life.

gasboy07 from PagingDr

Even worse, after gasboy07 deleted all of his posts and deregistered his blog, the web address has since been hijacked by some entrepreneur who has put up a web page mimicking gasboy07's blog, and redirecting readers to a whole bunch of advertisements and questionable links. I recommend that you do not visit to gasboy07's blog, and if you do, don't click on any of the links.

In a disturbing development, it seems that someone has mananged to get to the URL that my blog used to live at, pasted something from google cache, and redirected it to ads in such a way that the google spam bot won't pick it up. I'd like to say that I had nothing to do with that, and have hopefully taken sufficient action to have the site removed. Thank you to all of those who have pointed it out to me and sent me their concerns.

gasboy07 from PagingDr