Lesson for Medical Students
Here is a comment from a reader over at the The MUSC Tiger in response exchange started with my last posting.
However, I hope the folks at MUSCTiger are wise enough to not post ‘diary’ entries any further. It is a shame you cannot vent to your peers in this medium, but it seems obvious someone could use your post to get you expelled. Posted by Lawtonfunk at The MUSC Tiger
I really don’t have a problem with medical students venting to their peers. The problem is that I am a customer of the establishment in which these students are venting over. These students are walking with teams that make life changing decisions that could affect me or my family. I have witnessed from a distance upwards of fifty or more of these doctor/resident/student/nurse practitioner care teams making their way from room to room in the early morning hours at the MUSC Children’s Hospital. I do not know what all is said during these hall talks, and that is really what this whole exchange was about at least from my perspective. I thought that Katie was advising any medical professional reading her blog to resist telling patients the whole truth.
There’s no rule that says a reader is required to read X number of postings on a blog to gather a feel for the author’s personality and likelihood to use sarcasm. Some of the readers and Jenks would obviously disagree with me on this point. I feel that it is the author’s responsibility to consider the audience. My initial reaction to Katie’s post was actually much worse that what I wrote in my last posting. I actually came very close to writing a letter to the MUSC Hospital administration in lieu of posting to my blog. It is funny that Lawtonfunk made that point, but I would not have been doing it get anyone expelled. I would have been doing it to hopefully raise awareness to a potential problem in the attitude and training at MUSC.
I would suggest that if medical students want to vent online to their peers in the way Katie did then they should consider a private forum requiring registration and proof of truly being a peer. You MUST consider who your audience when posting to a blog or any other public web site. That is precisely why many companies are creating blogging policies. The name of the “The MUSC Tiger” blog and the public announcement of the student status at MUSC by the contributors of the blog leave no room for anonymity. MUSC and more importantly the hospitals are represented by The MUSC Tiger blog. I as layman and infrequent visitor to their blog had no way of knowing that what Katie was writing was anything more than a true “Lesson of the Day” gained from an attending physician at the Medical University of South Carolina during one of those hush-hush hall meetings in front of a patient’s room.
I am as bad if not worse about writing before I consider my audience sometimes. I hope that this posting is taken as a “Lesson of the Day” from a patient’s perspective. It should be pretty clear that patients don’t know what they are not told. I know there legal requiremnts for doctors to disclose everything, but who’s policing this requirement? Well today I guess I am.
I feel that I have generally become more tolerant of medical professionals because I have lived sixteen hours per day among them with my son in the hospital for more than two months since his birth last November. That is why I wrote on my blog instead of to the MUSC hospital administration. Bash me for expressing myself if you want. I can take it. My intent was only to try to influence what I perceived to be bad practices and a bad attitude towards patients.