Spotlight on medblogs

GruntDoc, jump up on this stage and take a bow! Emergency Physician Monthly is impressed with your blog:

When Allen Roberts sat down to create an online medical journal three years ago, he didn’t think of himself as a “blogger.” He was just an Emergency Physician in Texas sharing his thoughts with whoever happened upon his website. Sometimes he wrote about trivial things, like a funny gift from his nursing staff. But he also posted his thoughts about real ED issues, like tort reform and ambulance diversion, and pretty soon he had created an online dialogue. Roberts’ website became a place for EPs to swap stories, complaints and medical advice in a casual and exceedingly convenient environment. Thus Gruntdoc.com was born, and much to Roberts’ surprise, became a gold standard among medical web journals. But don’t take our word for it; Gruntdoc.com was recently voted Best Medical Weblog of 2004.

Also featured in their report: RangelMD.com; Symtym; richardwinters.com; and Medpundit (but why do they call her Webpundit?).

This isn't GruntDoc's first brush with fame. Blog-historians will recall that GruntDoc won praise from Forbes Magazine in 2003:

Allen Roberts is a 40-year-old emergency room doctor in Texas, who works in a trauma center that sees about 65,000 patients each year. A U.S. Navy doctor, he was for four years deployed with the U.S. Marine Corps. This experience--as both a doctor and military man--lends an interesting color to his posts..."Blogging combines my interest in computers and medicine, and just venting my spleen," he says. Recent post (on a news story that Marines may not have taken their anti-malarial medications): "I genuinely admire Marines, but their inability to accept the germ theory of disease (or the protozoal theory of malaria) boggles my mind."

(Other favorites were Medpundit, Family Medicine Notes, In the Pipeline, and Living Code.)

(So GruntDoc, what are you going to do next? Is there a guest appearance on ER in your future?)

More praise for my medblogging colleagues:

USA Today calls bookofjoe a "Hot Site:"

...we’re pretty sure that even if there are more blogging anesthesiologists out there, Joe’s blog would still stand out, with prose combining the elegance of a fine writer with the terrific content of someone who’s actually got interesting things to say. Joe celebrates life’s small good things, and we celebrate this blog.

CodeBlueBlog won Best Clinical Sciences Medical Weblog for 2004, and was a finalist in the 2004 Weblog Awards, Best of the Top 2500-3500 blogs.

Guardian Online has named "Six of the best health and medicine blogs:" The Examining Room of Dr. Charles; Random Acts of Reality; Code Blog: Tales of a Nurse; A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure; In the Pipeline; and Doing Less Harm (which, alas, has perished).

Medical journalist Saint Nate has successfully launched "Skeptics Circle," which recently hit the big time.

Other Best Medical Weblog winners: Cancer Blog, for Best New Medical Weblog; and Symtym, for Best Health Policy/Ethics Weblog.

Medical Grand Rounds is thriving, thanks to Nick and dozens of contributors. (Nick examines the comments on medblogs, and wonders if our casual readers are ready for "unfettered medical blogging.")
Today's edition of Grand Rounds is sponsored by Polite Dissent, and next week, it's...Gruntdoc.com!

Sincere congratulations to you all. When is the official Awards Dinner, and what will we be wearing?