2013 was a great year for the blog and for social media in nephrology. After a down year in 2012 for PBFluids, only 57 posts all year, I bounced back by nearly doubling that productivity with 112 posts last year. One of my most productive years. But to me the most remarkable change has been the emergence of a nephrology community in social media. My posts here at PBFluids certainly dripped with social media. Here is the year in review month by month.
January
February
8 posts.
The first post is one of my favorite posts of all time. It is an analysis of the ISDA/AHA clinical practice guidelines on enterococcal infective endocarditis. The post is essentially a recap and summary of Twitter conversations on the subject with some additional research to provide some context. The remainder of the month has some solid work, including a
post on dialysis for cast nephropathy bemoaning the lack of Gambro 1100 dialyzer availability in the US and a
follow-up on the enterococcal post with a deep dive into additional data. Social poked through in a post on the
horrible slides provided by the ASN by Myron Miller. I had a nice email from Paul Segal coming to Dr. Miller’s defense and a tweet from
Jim Smith regarding the post.
March
March was my most productive month of the year. This was because I was researching
NephMadness and working on a review of geriatric fluid and electrolyte issues (don’t hold your breath, it was rejected and will not be published). My favorite post of the month is probably
this one about the NKF’s effort to get dialysis covered under medicare.
April
April was a very social month. I posted my first Storify (a web service that allows one to easily capture and publish a collection of tweets) on the link between
hyponatremia and hip fractures. I had a few posts on Nephmadness (
here,
here and
here). There was a nice post looking at
over diagnosis as it relates to breast cancer, prostate cancer and CKD. I had a patient show up with a potassium of 9 that led to a couple of posts on
hyperkalemia. The image of the EKG is one of my most popular tweets ever.
I used a poll on managing the hyperkalemia. Another favorite for the year, was a post about
nephrology limericks. Again, this was primarily a summary of a twitter conversation.
@MGKatz036 Stop that NaCl its the reason he’s not doing well In order to volume resuscitate The hip new thing is Ringers Lactate
— Joel Topf (@kidney_boy) April 18, 2013
May
June
June had a number of social posts. I received a lot of commentary on a post about paying for kidney donors. There was some good discussion about my case of rhabdo with a CPK over a million. But by far the
most commented post was about the fool who drank a quart of soy sauce and developed severe hypernatremia. It resulted in two posts and another
google docs poll. I also did a nice
post on the Central American CKD epidemic that came after I was tweeted about my thoughts on the issue.
July
July was a light month, as I began to gear up for the second year medical students. I did publish my
electrolyte handbook as an eBook. A project that I hope to spend more time on this year.
August
The big event in August was not on my blog, but on Twitter where I
live tweeted the ASN Board Review Class. Awesome experience. I tweeted using the eAJKD account. Unfortunately eAJKD and I were just getting our live tweeting sea legs under us. We missed the important step of compiling the tweets into a blog post. I find that live Tweeting, focuses me and forces me to rework the information into a tweet. This helps me remember the information better.
September
I went to London and live tweeted the Med 2.0 conference for eAJKD. Getting better at this. The blog had two posts where I used single tweets as jumping off sites for more extensive coverage, a model that I think best illustrates the purpose of a blog in a Twitter world. The first was on
oliguria and the second was on the practice of
giving patients money to help them buy medications, or in this case a treadmill.
October
Only 6 posts but a lot of impact. The month began
beating back the idiots suggesting IV contrast is benign to the kidneys. I took the boards that month and
posted my thoughts on the test and the ASN Board Review Class. The longest and one of the most important posts of the year was next. I posted on the
CJASN electronic journal club. This has been a failure up to now. I hope that in 2014 this project can be re-invigorated. We will see.
November
December
December was dominated by the Renal Fellow Network’s annual top nephrology stories of 2013 (see
here,
here,
here,
here and
here). This turned into a collaborative effort as a lot of independent nephrology bloggers and participant in social media began to blog about different stories. I hope 2014 turns into the year when we really see more collaboration in the Nephrology Social Media Space. I think the RFN top stories offers a blue-print for this. The other post that was particularly social was an
examination of an abstract linking Pip/Tazo to acute renal failure. A lot of twitter discussion on this.
