I read a lot online, not only blogs but several regional and national newspapers. My favorite items from the past weeks are listed below, and reveal some of my odder interests.
I know I'm not alone in being profoundly relieved at the end of the presidential campaign. While grappling with the enormity of the democratic process, I have also been attending to other critically important tasks such as considering a format change for the Weekly Wrap. A lot of my preoccupations involve reading beyond medical blogs, so I'm going to try adding in non-medical links just so you know what I've been reading in general.
I'm having a busy week in San Francisco, attending the UCSF Care of the Hospitalized Patient conference, tackling research at the UCSF library, and running around with my nutty mother and her nutty Pekinese dog. The Wrap is therefore on the brief side, but still finger-lickin' good:
I try to keep a rural filter on the Wrap, but not everything rural makes it on the list, and a lot of posts of non-rural origin do. Truthfully, rural as a way of life has a broad range. The true filter on this list is my own experience--fruity, funny, and frustrating as that may be--of being a rural doctor. Thus:
Strangely enough, now that I'm enjoying my mini-retirement, I spend less time reading blogs than I did when I was working. Of course, I'm tackling the Herculean task of getting my house in order, which tends to obscure all such pleasures. What time I do find to read blog is enlightening as always. To whit:
Medical bloggers have been keeping me informed of new trends and interesting cases, and it has been a privilege to summarize their work in the Weekly Wrap. However, sometimes I notice a lot of overlap between the Wrap and Grand Rounds, so I've decided to narrow the focus of the Wrap to topics of interest to rural life and rural medicine. Such as these:
I have a long weekend off and I'm planning to take a brief break from blogging. Because of this, I'm posting the Wrap a few days early and only including my reading through 9/18/08, but believe me there were some plenty good posts published during that time:
I'm still recovering from link-overload after hosting Grand Rounds this week, so I'm taking another break from the Weekly Wrap. However, after being honored with an Arte y Pico award earlier this week, I'm sharing the honor with five other bloggers. Read about them in the post below.
I'm not posting my Weekly Wrap today because I will be hosting Grand Rounds Volume 4, Number 49 here next week and I'm resting up in preparation. But don't forget to submit your best and brightest to me at: ruraldoctoring@gmail.com by 7pm PST Sunday, August 24th. That's tomorrow! Get busy!
I learn so much by reading medical blogs. I think I'm evolving into a better doctor because of what I read. One of the reasons many of us entered medicine is for the opportunity for lifetime learning. Here's how I've been improving myself this week:
Some weeks the blogs I read mirror my own preoccupations, serving as a kind of virtual mood-ring if you will. This week, several posts addressing different aspects of professionalism caught my cast of mind exactly:
Let's hear it for the work of medical bloggers! Vitum Medicinius wrote a post this week on why reading medical blogs is useful. Here's a few reasons why:
It's been an amazing week on the blogs. I marked so many posts to re-read, I could barely keep up with the new posts coming down the pipeline. Here's a few that got me thinking:
Every week, I add new medblog feeds to my reader. There are so many interesting bloggers writing these days. Here's a few posts that got me thinking this week:
