Med forum for meds only to answer

[tridacna]

Id like to see a med forum in which anyone can ask a question but only real meds can answer. Similarish to i2i. Is this possible? We have enough medically trained members that could participate. I remember Ask DrDeco was a great resource when doc viking was around.

 

[chillyinCanada]

@The Chairman
@Akimbo

 

[The Chairman]

Bring this up in a month or so after we finish with the new site. There are issues, but they might be surmountable.

 

[lowwall]

I run a (non-diving) forum and have talked to some of our physician members about this. The usual response is they don't want to have the liability risk of answering specific medical questions without having examined the patient. Basically all they would be willing to do is tell you to see your doctor.

 

[tridacna]

I run a (non-diving) forum and have talked to some of our physician members about this. The usual response is they don't want to have the liability risk of answering specific medical questions without having examined the patient. Basically all they would be willing to do is tell you to see your doctor.

They answer them already! There are several docs who provide valuable feedback (with caveats). I'm simply trying to filter out the noise from those threads.

 

[Akimbo]

Id like to see a med forum in which anyone can ask a question but only real meds can answer.

Interesting. You are basically asking for a forum with a "Post New Thread" button but threads themselves would not have a "Post Reply" button for members who are not medical professionals.

Playing devil's advocate:
How would a non-medical member be able to reply in their own thread?

Another question is how do you/we define "only real meds can answer"? Limit replies to ScubaBoard medical moderators like @Duke Dive Medicine and @doctormike only? We could set up a group for medical professionals with permissions to reply in this new forum perhaps.

There are a lot of medical professionals on the board who aren't medical moderators.

Consider what might be given up. Say you ask a question about an unusual medical condition or injury. The limited number of pros may not have any experience with it but a non-medical member with the answer can't reply. Also, members with the same condition can't add their experience dealing with it.

Alternative Option
Perhaps a more workable option is to have forum with special rules with more aggressive off-topic and unsubstantiated replies restrictions? "Unsubstantiated" is way too vague a definition but might lead to a better characterization.

 

[doctormike]

I run a (non-diving) forum and have talked to some of our physician members about this. The usual response is they don't want to have the liability risk of answering specific medical questions without having examined the patient. Basically all they would be willing to do is tell you to see your doctor.

That's not really the issue here. Anyone (like myself) who is willing to discuss things online has already decided how far to go, and we wouldn't be doing this if we were so concerned about liability. I have been helping people like this since the late twentieth century, and so far, no problems (knock wood!).

I am careful not to make diagnoses or recommend specific therapy (apart from very minor suggestions), but it's often helpful to give some background information, explain anatomic terms, clarify what another doctor has said or to make a local referral.

 

[doctormike]

I think that the devil is in the details - how do you decide who is a "real med". Right now, medical moderators are chosen (by Pete, I guess) and are vetted in some way. Not everyone with an MD after their name is qualified to give advice here, and there is one mod here without those initials who I would trust with my life.

So maybe it could be a form where you had to be a "blue check" member to reply. Something more than just a regular member but without the obligations that a medical moderator has to the forum. Of course, then the question is - who decides who reaches that level? Is that person making that call vetting contributors? I guess there is something like that with Instructor forums, but at least there are some agency standards of what qualifies someone to be an instructor...

Happy to help if this becomes a formal project!

 

[lowwall]

I'm happy to hear there are physicians who would be willing to help. But I think you'd need to figure out how to restrict the responses. Perhaps set up a doctors group that can post freely, but require moderator review for all other posters to the forum.

On my site the amount of bad or inappropriate medical advice was horrifying enough that we just banned medical questions entirely. It appears to be an unfortunate feature of the Facebook age that those who disagree with standard medical care tend to be the loudest and most persistent responders to medical questions. Perhaps the focus here is narrow enough to avoid that without special effort, but I doubt it.

 

[doctormike]

I'm happy to hear there are physicians who would be willing to help. But I think you'd need to figure out how to restrict the responses. Perhaps set up a doctors group that can post freely, but require moderator review for all other posters to the forum.

On my site the amount of bad or inappropriate medical advice was horrifying enough that we just banned medical questions entirely. It appears to be an unfortunate feature of the Facebook age that those who disagree with standard medical care tend to be the loudest and most persistent responders to medical questions. Perhaps the focus here is narrow enough to avoid that without special effort, but I doubt it.

I mean, that hasn't been an issue, and I have been a medical mod here for many years. The current system (the diving medicine subforum) has worked just fine from our end, for the most part. It has been active with a lot of good information shared, with occasional medical mod input. If someone posts something really off base, it usually gets reported and dealt with, if it's not dealt with by other posters in the thread.

I'm not sure what you are suggesting for scubaboard. Are you saying that we should keep the current subforum but require a mod to review all posts? I'm definitely not willing to do that, and I don't think that anyone on the staff should either. Besides being a huge obligation (I don't think that any other posts are moderated before they appear in a thread), it implies that you are vetting and agreeing with the post. That's not good at all. Also, what if someone writes six paragraphs of word salad. In it are some truths, some misconceptions and a lot of poorly worded gibberish. Do we edit it? Do we review it and submit it to the poster with suggestions for revisions?

I think that's a bit different from what @tridacna was suggesting...