Article Text
Abstract
Blogs that address issues of health and medical education run by clinical and research teams can have a profound impact on how patients access and navigate health information. Regularly updated websites are useful tools to facilitate two-way communication with a range of different audiences from patients to the general public. They provide benefits of supporting patients to learn and self-manage their health, and to educate colleagues and disseminate research. This article describes how to set up a blog, pointing out some simple style and formatting considerations, usable methods and appropriate conduct for healthcare professionals to engage with patients online.
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Footnotes
Twitter Follow Alison Thomson @somehow_related David Baker @prof_mouse and Gavin Giovannoni @GavinGiovannoni on Twitter
Contributors AT, DB, GG conceived the idea, DR collected the data. AT wrote the manuscript with DB and GG contribution.
Competing interests AT, DB and GG are authors of the Barts MS Research blog mentioned in the article.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed. This paper was reviewed by Ed Wild, London, UK.
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