Changing It Up

I suspected that this day would come, but even so I wasn't entirely prepared for it. In discussions with my chief resident about how I was dealing with my patient's death, I blurted out "Oh, I blogged a little bit about how I felt about it, which seemed to help."

Big, huge mistake.

Apparently, the organization where I'm doing my residency sent out a "cease and desist" email last year to resident bloggers, asking/telling them to immediately stop blogging about anything to do with patients or residency. I was forwarded a copy of this email. It would seem that the reason they are concerned is that a blog could be used in court as a medico-legal document. I'd say that is ludicrous, but most of us still remember what happened to Flea.

So now I'm trying to figure out what to do.

I think I'll leave up previous posts written during residency, as they were all written before I'd gotten the word. If you notice something you feel is a HIPAA violation (keeping in mind I try to change personal details and deliberately keep things vague), shoot me an email at tinyshrink77@gmail.com so we can talk about it. I'm afraid I'm going to have to quit writing this blog, though, as I really don't have much of a life outside of residency. Even if I never posted anything about a patient, ever, the email specifically says "and residency". If I were a great cook, or could write discerning article reviews in psychiatry weekly, or had something else interesting to say, it would be different, but I don't.

Partly, though, it made me a little angry. Another resident told me he writes fiction and non-fiction (I'm assuming with the intention of publishing), and he takes similar precautions to change patient data, so if his book were published how is that different from my blog? It could still be used in court, right? Even a diary, if its existence is known, can be admissible in certain cases, so how is that any different? Could a draft of a manuscript be admissible? I think the program took the "just stop it now" step with the intention of examining its policy later, but it doesn't seem that any actual discussion has taken place. If it had, surely they would have made this an official policy instead of just an email, sent out before I joined the organization.

Ugh. I haven't posted since I found out because I didn't know what to say. I'm not in any trouble with my program, and I'd like to keep it that way.