The Doctor’s Tablet Turns Two: Learning to Walk and Run

On the second anniversary of The Doctor’s Tablet, it’s encouraging to note that, much like a 2-year-old child, we can now climb onto and down from furniture unassisted and we’re beginning to run.

We hope tantrums won’t follow as we enter our third year in existence.

Levity aside, 2013 was a banner year for this blog and we want to offer our sincere thanks to our blog post contributors and you, our readers.

We’ve hit the 200-post mark, visitor traffic has increased 90% year-over- year and 87 blog authors have helped our audience better understand medicine, medical education, health, science and bioethics.

Like any publication trying to find its niche, we continue to improve and adjust based on both author and audience feedback. In 2012, the first year of our blog, we observed that content about medical education really popped. The post 5 Ways to Ace Medical School Exams was a rock star. Based on it and other related content, we decided to make medical education a central blog focus in 2013.

We created a library of robust content that covers everything from selecting a medical school to succeeding once there, and ultimately choosing a specialty. Our MedMo initiative, short for Medical Education Month (which morphed into Medical Education Year), garnered tens of thousands of views. The posts and related videos on a designated Web landing page continue to draw interest. And the post that started it all? Well, “5 Ways” remains our #1 post—with an average of more than 1,300 pageviews each month since it was published.

Another good measure of response has been reaction on other social media platforms. Earlier this month, we were pleased to see this tweet commenting on a recent post on How to Study for Step 1 USMLE, the challenging eight-hour exam required by nearly all medical schools before students can proceed to the third year. Retweeting both @EinsteinMed (our Twitter feed) and careersinmed, @Pradip4Peds tweeted:

@careersinmed @EinsteinMed Great advice, I passed this onto my students in my role as Academic Advisory Dean 10:25pm, Jan 02 from Web

One area we are committed to expanding is our research content. Surveys we’ve conducted show that about one third of our audience considers research news vitally important.

In 2013, Einstein announced revised competencies for its medical students. Central among them is “physician as scientist.” In a world of rapid advances—from genetic sequencing to big-data analysis and other areas of health-related technology—we want to produce more posts to help our audience understand how research at every level can meaningfully deepen our understanding of disease and its impact on healthy living.

2013 was also the year in which notable other platforms began regularly sharing our content. We’re humbled and pleased that blog posts from our contributors have appeared on KevinMD.com more than 18 times since we launched our blog, 16 of those in the past year. Huffington Post has begun republishing select content by Einstein faculty members Paul Marantz, M.D., M.P.H., and Ruth Macklin, Ph.D., both of whom are featured contributors to the blog. Wing of Zock’s Chart Review has also highlighted our posts.

Last month a post Dr. Marantz wrote about the misinformation created by a British Medical Journal “apple a day” study caught the eye of BBC News, leading to BBC Radio asking Dr. Marantz to expand on his The Doctor’s Tablet post. (He’s featured on BBC Radio’s More or Less program, starting at the 21-minute mark of the “Obesity Crisis?” episode.)

At a time when seemingly every organization is a content provider, it’s reassuring to see the words of our talented authors resonate beyond our blog.

Another important development has been a steadier flow of comments to the blog. We look forward to sharing more thought-provoking posts in the year ahead. We’d love to hear your thoughts on what we post—and what you think we ought to be blogging about. So keep those comments coming. You can also reach us anytime at blogs[@]einstein.yu.edu.

Here’s to another year of healthy development! Can’t wait to turn 3.