Illusion of Anonymity, or Blogging as Release

(originally written 20 March 2007, 6:00pm EST)

I’m sitting here relaxing in a fabulous bookstore/coffee shop, Politics & Prose, enjoying a pot of Earl Grey tea (yes, I’m still going strong on abstaining from coffee for the Lenten season) and reading tidbits of today’s Washington Post that was left behind by some patron before me.

Found in the Health section, in her article, “Doctors Dish on Their Patients in Anonymous Blogs,” Margarita Bauza debates the ethical concerns about medical doctors blogging about their patients. To be sure, there are issues of doctor-patient confidentiality at play here; doctors need to maintain patients’ confidentiality in order to promote an open and trusting environment that engenders patients’ trust and full disclosure.

On more material levels, doctors need to comply with HIPAA, or possibly face reprimand from their employers (because the possibility of being sued always attracts attention here in the U.S.), and losing their license.

But there’s more than just that at stake here, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that confidentiality is of utmost importance. I also think that doctors need to better be trained to honor patients’ disclosures (the countless examples of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, intersex, and queer people who have disclosed to doctors only to face discrimination and substandard care because of their disclosures attest to this).

But doctors are people, too. And, what strikes me in Bauza’s article is that these anonymous medical bloggers (to whom I’d say beware, for it’s simply an illusion of anonymity!!!) are making plain their need for an outlet. Am I condoning blogging as the proper outlet? No, not necessarily. But, as a blogging teacher, I do know the value of venting and reflecting upon classes (and yes, even sometimes students) in blogs. Would I feel the same need to do such blogging given a real-life community that I might share those same thoughts with? I don’t think so, at least not to the same degree.

Bauza’s article is quick to point out the problems and potential dangers (ethical and financial) of blogging doctors, but other than blaming the doctors, the article doesn’t seem to get at underlying issues. Let us not just chastise doctors for postings which may be inappropriate, but rather let us offer them more proper channels for release so that they might better take care of their psyches, and in so doing be better able to take care of their patients.

Let’s shake up the whole system, and get at the root causes. Maybe then real change can be brought about, in this particular example, but other cases as well.