Who: Dr. Michael Kirsch
Blog: MD Whistleblower
About the blogger: Kirsch is a full-time practicing physician who is board certified in gastroenterology. He practices at the Center for Digestive Health based in Cleveland.
What makes this blog so fierce? His eye for detail and sense of humor make for highly entertaining and illuminating essays. Plus his writing style sometimes verges on poetry, with abstract concepts taking on nearly physical form.
Focus: Kirsch covers the doctor-patient relationship, medical ethics and quality measurement. In vignettes and commentaries on the medical profession. he peeks 'behind the medical curtain' and delivers candor and controversy. Be sure to check out his essays under "general whistleblowing." One post describes how, in a Stalinist twist, the FDA wants doctors to serve as government informers on pharma companies whose promo materials are misleading.
Quote: From a post that asks whether EMR represents progress: "While EMR vendors are convinced that medical histories can be recorded using P&C technique, I'm a deep skeptic. The medical history is a narrative, a record of a fluid, and sometimes meandering dialogue between patients and physicians. The history probes in all directions. It wanders. It creates new passageways. The patient's response to a question often opens up a new avenue of inquiry, a function that cannot be reproduced on a rigid template."