disrepute

I see that a review of medical bloggers has determined that we can be done for a)possibly allowing patients to be identified and b)possibly allowing our speciality/hospital/department to be recognised therefore potentially "bringing the profession into disrepute". ?OK maybe I understand point number one -nobody likes to know that their doctor thinks that they are a personality disordered no-hoper with a drug seeking habit and a risible line in alibis but ???bringing the profession into disrepute - apparently just by being identifiable at that.

It doesn't augur well for Aussie docs - I personally spend half my time in chronic pain in one of only two tertiary centres in my state.I can name by sight and body odour almost every public hospital pain specialist in the country. Does that mean that I can never bitch, never share angst or anecdotes in cyberspace?---Any budding ethicists please reply.

My sibling is an emergency medicine specialist; you would think that with the thousands of visits a year in every emergency department that anecdotes would be safely anonymous but I wonder....the other half of my practice is anaesthesia in a regional hospital and part of our duty is the compulsory 6 month training in anaesthesia for emergency physicians, ICU specialists and rural GPs.I was taking a new (ED) registrar through the hospital and took her through the ED. Hearing a high pitched yowling coming from a cubicle she remarked "I didn't know Janice lived up this way"....don't ever forget that 60% of health service resources gets taken up by 5% of patients (I made this statistic up)(.A particular favourite is the lady who photographs her bowel actions and carefully pastes them (the photos not the...) into an album ;every week she turns up at the ED and insists on some hapless resident going through the folder with her to spot any abnormalities.Does this anecdote make her identifiable?)