Last Friday I asked health care providers to post and discuss the issues we face when blogging. What can we blog about, and where do we draw the line? And should we even be blogging?

I’ve found that this has been a hot topic of late and found many good posts at numerous health care blogs. Here are some of the opinions from health care providers within the last few weeks:

• Scalpel, an ER physician in Texas, posted HIPAA rules that may apply to health care bloggers. As he states, he is not a lawyer but his interpretation seems right on. There is some interesting comments on this post as well.
• #1 Dinosaur ponders the death of health care blogs and their life cycle. His analogy of human life to a blog’s “life” puts this issue into perspective.
• A very interesting, yet very possible, take on the subject of why health care blogs are leaving the web or going private comes from our scholarly Terri Polick. She wonders if health care bloggers an endangered species.
• Anonymous blogging has been one argument to maintaining both patient and blogger confidentiality. Julie from Life in the NHS discusses her concerns of being outed while our fabulous Kim makes the argument for keeping it real. Kim makes an excellent point that blogging anonymously takes a lot of effort.
• The Medical Blogger Code of Ethics has been born out of the concerns health care bloggers face. The most recent draft of the Medical Blogger Code of ethics includes clear presentation of perspective (giving readers an understanding of the background of the blogger), confidentiality, commercial disclosure, reliable information, and courtesy. And their current mascot is very cute, in case anyone wanted my opinion!
• A lawyer from West Virginia has a blog that discusses health care law, including health care blogging. This post has a 30 minute podcast from the 2007 Health Care Blogging Summit. According to this podcast, health care blogging is about 2-3 years behind the general blogging community. Although there is no specific legal advice, the topics are timely and interesting.
• Speaking of law, this post over at Universal Hub questions whether there will be fewer doctor and nurse bloggers, and has links to a blog that has since disappeared likely because of a court case. It includes an interesting newspaper article link for those who are super curious about that particular blogger. It is also a great reminder that everything online is saved.
• Lastly, Cathy over at I’m A Blogaholic gives a head’s up to those who do decide to delete their blog, and how to properly delete all of it, cache’s included. This internet is an amazing creature, isn’t it?

This certainly isn’t the end of the discussion. I think we will be seeing more of this as more and more health care professionals are joining the blogging ranks. I don’t believe health care blogging is dying… at least I certainly hope not. Blogging is a great forum for us to get our word out, perhaps open the eyes of health care consumers on the issues we face, and hopefully have a little fun.