Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics

The Healthcare Blogger Code of Ethics has caught some attention recently. The Detroit Free Press ran an article which highlighted this code.

The author of medblogcode.blogspot.com composed, with the help of other doctors, a medical blogger code of ethics. The code covers issues pertaining to confidentiality, privacy and commercial disclosure.

“I think doctors who are blogging are going to be a lot more careful about what they write before they send it out to the world to see,” said Dr. Hsien Hsien Lei, a geneticist who was one of the first medical bloggers to offer guidelines on ethics.

Starting six to eight years ago with a handful of physicians offering perspectives on medical news, the medical blogosphere now counts between 500 and 1,000 blogs.

Their subjects range from scientific developments to comical observations on patient-doctor relationships, to a place where doctors — protected by the cloak of anonymity — feel free to vent about their practices.

We have had good contributions from Palmdoc, who pointed out some symbolic confusion on our part (thank you, it would be quite ironic for a code of ethics to be represented by the symbol for merchants and thieves - an odd combination, if I might add). Given your comments, by the way, is there any alteration of #1 that would be warranted so that the anonymity could be kept better, as you suggested in the blog?

I do think we got a bit carried away by the bit about the peas.

Anyhow, now that we have a symbol (that is actually correct) as well as corrections to grammar (thanks, Bernard), we can ask a serious question: how are we going to do this? Are we going to have people submit the names of their blog and have them listed in the blogroll of this blog?

Let’s here suggestions now….or forever hold your green, pod-encased veggies.