I don’t think anyone has talked about this, because I don’t think it’s really ever happened before. But when I applied for residency this year, I debated whether I should put my website or my blogging on my application. I worried that people reading my application would be scared about blogging, or wouldn’t know what it was, or had only heard bad things about it. I worried they would just think it’s a great way to violate someone’s privacy, or a great way to get in trouble with a lawsuit. (One of the reasons I haven’t decided if I’m going to blog residency is because I’d like to discuss it with my future program director first.)

But I decided to go for it and include it in my application for a couple reasons:

• I’m proud of it.
• It’s something in my life I do weekly at the least.
• It’s unique and sets me apart.
• Being able to reflect and process things makes me a better physician.
• I’ve had national news coverage of my blogging.
• I knew I was going to include my other projects, MDCalc and MedsList in my application, and those are casually linked to my blog, so they’d find them anyway.
• And speaking of finding them anyway, if you Google my name, I’m either the first or second hit (always fighting it out with this guy)

At the brilliant suggestion of a mentor of mine (Hi Michelle!), I came up with a short list of some of my favorite posts (PDF) showing what my blogging was all about, printed it out, and brought copies to give interviewers if the blog came up.

And the blog did come up. I’d say at about one-third of the programs, I talked about it with at least one interviewer. The response was overwhelmingly positive. No one mentioned any concerns about HIPAA/privacy stuff, and as far as I could tell, everyone felt like it was a Good Thing ™. People liked the fact that I was reflecting, processing, and thinking about what it means to become a physician, and also liked the informal network medbloggers have created as a community. I think having the print-out of some of my posts was really, really helpful to reference. Very few interviewers (only ones that I knew before applying) had actually visited the site (that I know about). In hindsight it was probably silly to think that an interviewer that has to get through thousands of applications would dial-up my URL on his or her PC, but you never know.

My advice to future applicants: if you’re writing a blog, first, don’t be anonymous. While there are certainly bloggers who are anonymous to protect their identities and lawsuits and blah blah blah, there are way too many bloggers (medbloggers, especially, in my opinion) that hide behind a pseudonym so they can bitch and rant and complain about these horrible, horrible people (read: patients) who waste the blogger’s time. They would never say these same things to their mothers, friends, or in polite company. Being public and open about your blogging forces you to think about what you’re going to write–”do I really want my name to be associated with this?” I certainly try to follow something I learned in church camp as “Thumper’s Mother’s Rule”: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all (my addendum is this: or at least be constructive).

If you’re proud of what you’re writing, and what your blog has done for you, put it on your application (including the URL)! It won’t even come up most of the time, but it certainly gave interviewers something to ask about, and definitely made me stand out from other applicants (which, as you know, is the key to getting into med school). It sure beats the same old, “So, tell me why you chose Emergency Medicine” question that I hope to never answer again in my life.

Finally, bring a list of some of your posts. It will help interviewers immediately see the things you write about, and will also help them to see you’re passionate about medicine, care about it greatly, and you’re also passionate and interested in the field in which you’re applying.

(That all being said, if your blog is just a bitch session about how terrible med school is, no one wants to hear that. Leave it out.)