Taking Stock of Doctors’ Thoughts

As The Doctor’s Tablet approaches its six-month mark, we wanted to take a moment to thank our devoted faculty members for providing fascinating insights into the inner thoughts of doctors and clinicians. We also want to give a huge show of gratitude to our devoted followers who have amplified the blog’s message through more than one thousand tweets, re-tweets, Facebook likes, shares, blog comments (and a few pins).

How are we doing? Tell us!

Our goal when we launched The Doctor’s Tablet in January was to “share observations and insights from the front lines of medicine and translational research” and we’re pleased to say that’s what we’ve done.

But let’s be dead honest. This is our first blog and editing it (and finding all related content) is a learning experience to say the least. When we started The Doctor’s Tablet we set a goal to post twice each week. It’s been challenging at times. But somehow –  through a combination of blog evangelism, cajoling, shameless “selling” of the blog’s virtues to prospective contributors and yes, on occasion scrambling to find or write content – we’ve managed to pull things off.

The response has been better than we expected.

Starting with our first faculty post about whether a medical geneticist ever stops diagnosing, we’ve introduced you to a variety of perspectives from Albert Einstein College of Medicine; unique voices sharing their knowledge and opinions.

For instance, our post on body image issues and Vogue’s  “remodeling” of the singer Adele, drew hundreds of tweets and comments. Another standout:  our post on myths associated with medical librarians . We thought the post was truly original – we just didn’t know so many of you would like it, too!

Externally, the blog is beginning to get noticed.  The Doctor’s Tablet was recently mentioned in an American Association of Medical Colleges article about how medical colleges are joining the conversation in the blogosphere. We’re attracting guest bloggers, and have kicked off our efforts to showcase their writing with a post by  U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, M.D., who shared her thoughts on careers in public medicine. We look forward to posting additional perspectives from noted individuals in the world of medicine and health care.

Of course, we’ve recognized certain things needed tweaking, especially when it comes to the look and feel of the blog. At launch, our header image emphasized the history of medicine and the blog itself was too text heavy. We decided to look to the future of medicine which is why we designed a more modern looking header and began adding more images to the blog.

But those are really cosmetic changes.

The question is how can we do better from a content and engagement perspective?

We’d love for you to get involved and tell us what subject matter you’d like to see in The Doctor’s Tablet. We invite you to take a quick survey (quick, really – as in five minutes of your time). As a way of saying thanks, every person who completes it will be entered for a chance to win $60 in Starbucks gift cards.

Thanks for joining us at The Doctor’s Tablet! We look forward to continuing the conversation and celebrating our one-year mark …and beyond…together.