Welcome to the OLD YEAR/NEW YEAR edition of the ‘grote visite’ or Dutch Grand Rounds.
The theme of this Grand Round is past (what has been, history), present (hot news) and future (what to expect, wish, foresee).
We ring out the Old Year with two excellent posts of the dedicated bloggers and initiators of the Dutch Grand Round Jan Martens of MedBlog.nl and Dr. Shock of Dr Shock MD PhD
Jan Martens writes about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Historical Research. As some of you might know (I didn’t) Jan is conducting a historical research about the use of electricity and magnetism in psychiatry. Here he is focussing on video’s of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation. He searched Youtube with “transcranial magnetic stimulation” and only found a handful of interesting modern videos, but no old videos of guinea pigs in a magnetic stimulator -which he had hoped for. He would be most obliged if you could help him out with historical videos or other information about TMS.
Dr Shock has already responded to his request, but has found no older video’s. Perhaps youtube is to young for historical video’s, but I can also imagine that researchers are reluctant to show guinea pig experiments to the general public.
Dr Shock MD PhD presents Dr Shock’s popular posts from 2008 and a look ahead for 2009. Dr. Shock wonders whether the popularity of his two most popular posts this year (at least according WordPress Blog Stats), i.e. Sex, Video Games and the Brain and How much Chocolate is Good for your Health? is mainly based on the title and keywords (or the picture? –see his post). He also gives an overview of other top posts and the posts he found the most pleasurable to write. This was a post about empathy in the doctor patient relationship, part of a series about patient doctor relationship and it’s different aspects such as education, self-disclosure to name a few as well the post Why do psychiatrists like detectives?
I share his idea that the most popular posts are not always the posts you enjoyed yourself the most and vice versa. I often wonder why some posts become popular and others don’t.
Dr Shock intends to focus more on the developments of health 2.0 and medical education in the coming year 2009. He made a first step this year to become member of the tweeple community at twitter. A useful community, isn’t it @DrShock?
Dr Shock also asks us which of his posts we enjoyed the most. I think the unanimous answer is: “We like them all, it is the mix”.
Please visit Dr Shock’s blog to read more.
That concludes this edition. Or perhaps it concludes the Dutch Grand Round…….
I took a look at the carnival submission form, but found no new rounds planned, perhaps because a new scheme is still to be made, or perhaps because it will end here and now….
I do hope the Dutch Grand round will be continued, because there are enough good Dutch medical bloggers around. The question is why just few of them actively contribute to this round? Hopefully 2009 will bring a change.
Photo credit: loesenlodewijk Flickr Creative Commons
Laika's MedLibLog 
Dear Laika,
Should the Dutch Grand Round continue? That is a question with probably a long discussion. I enjoyed doing it. The input from the few admissions were of very high quality but I agree with you that there are a lot more excellent Dutch Medbloggers who for one reason or another did not contribute to the grand rounds, at least not on their own initiative. Maybe lack of time?
Curious for Jan Martens his opinion on this matter. Enjoyed your blog very much, hope to read more of your posts and twitters next year, stay healthy and have fun in 2009, kind regards Dr Shock
[…] Laika made the latest Dutch Grand Round of this year, will it continue? Please join the discussion on her blog in the comments. The theme of this Grand Round is past (what has been, history), present (hot news) and future (what to expect, wish, foresee). […]
Hi Dr Shock and Laika,
I think we should try to continue to Dutch Grand Rounds. We might do some more PR and again ask some of the medblogger if they want to cooperate. I also think that a nice tool to construct the posts would handy. I am trying scribefire ( http://www.scribefire.com/ ) but I am not convinced this is the way to go.
Kind regards,
Jan Martens
Hi Jan (and Walter),
I’m relieved that you find it worth while to continue. I think that a good PR is the most important. Other medical and health bloggers need to get more actively involved for the Dutch Round to become a success. Presumably we should start writing in Dutch as well or state more explicitly that we leave it up to the host. Perhaps we should lower the frequency a bit as well?
I don’t think that a tool that makes editing easier will matter much. The current blog-carnival is easy enough (at least with the current number of submissions).
O.k. when to start with the 2009 rounds? Looking forward to hearing from you both!!
Jacqueline
[…] Blog Carnivals in the field of Medicine (and hence called Grand Round). i.e. The Grand Round, the Dutch Grand Round (i.e. see here), and SurgeXperiences. Blog Carnivals are a regular compilation of the “best blogs in a […]