Blogs
Blogs, as many of you know, are a sort of virtual bulletin board where members of a specific group can post information, questions, and responses on particular topics. There are a number of permutations that can be observed throughout the web, and Blogs are generally topic specific, such as sports medicine, or diabetes. For example, the Diabetic Foot Blog is a leading Blog that is dedicated to amputation prevention and healing in persons with diabetes. Blogs provide an excellent "static communication", i.e users are not actively involved in dialogue in real-time but rather post questions, topics, and responses. The limitations in real time communication and networking have lead to the development of blog-like additions to the currently popular social networking sites.
Social Networking sites
In the last several years, social networking site users have grown exponentially. These sites allow users to create profiles where they can share information about themselves, post media, and interact with other users via both instant messaging and email. There are a number of sites that can be utilized, however the most popular currently are Facebook, Myspace, and Linkedin. Of these, Facebook and Myspace began as a social connectivity tool that was geared to the college and high school-aged community, while LinkedIn was focused more on creating connections between working individuals. Interestingly, in the last several years, each of these sites has instituted generalized program changes which move the focus and capabilities of each site towards a middle ground of both social and professional networking and perhaps Facebook is demonstrating the largest growth in this demographic. As a consequence, there are increasing profession-specific focus groups that are being generated within these sites which allow members to connect with their colleagues across town and across the country. For example a search performed today on Facebook for "podiatry" yielded 132 groups, including the APMA, ACFAS, and PRESENT group pages.
Other websites have been able to combine the idea of social networking with the addition of excellent academic information. At PRESENT Podiatry and PRESENT Diabetes, we have made recent updates which allow the user greater access to a wealth of didactic information. The NEWPodiatry.com (coming April 1st) will combine the social networking tools of eTalk blog postings with instant messaging, allowing increased user participation and more. It is an exciting time to be a PRESENT user!
Online Journals
In addition to the didactic information available at such sites as PRESENT Podiatry and PRESENT Diabetes, in the last several years there has been an increase in the availability of online journals. This can be observed both in increasing numbers of print journals which are placing their articles online, and perhaps most excitingly, in an increase in solely electronic journals. These journals, such as the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research, the Foot and Ankle Online Journal, the online plastic surgery journal Eplasty, or the new Journal of Diabetic Foot Complications provide an excellent resource to clinicians to obtain the most recent information being published on a topics related to management of conditions of the foot and ankle.
Conclusion
We live in an exciting world that gets smaller every day as our ability to communicate and share information with our colleagues' increases. The communication modalities discussed above are but a small sampling of what is available online, and I encourage you to seek out additional opportunities to share and obtain knowledge. It is important that we as clinicians embrace these new modalities that allow increased communication and give and take of ideas. Such interaction will only serve to further strengthen us, and our profession.
As always, we love hearing from YOU. Please contact us, with any questions or to share your experiences with the community on this topic. I look forward to hearing from you!
