I was inspired to start writing my blog after reading several other physician-authored blogs. Some have been around for years. Others are relative newcomers, like mine.

Blogs (or “web-logs”) started out as a place to write a diary or journal. Many were rather light-hearted. Some written by physicians have become very serious, with descriptions of memorable clinical encounters or important health industry news and commentary.

Others have become a source of free information for newcomers to hobbies or businesses. Topics range from crochet and needlepoint, to other artistic endeavors, to health and fitness, to starting and operating one's online business.

They continue to evolve. I have found it fascinating to explore them and interact with other bloggers, especially physicians.

So, I spent some time reviewing and cataloguing blogs written by physicians. So far, I have visited about 30 of them. There remains a long list of physician blogs that I have not yet investigated. My purpose for today's post is two-fold:

1. To list the first 30 physician-authored blogs that I have catalogued;
2. To provide a brief summary of the details of my blog, for those who are more nerdy and interested in the techy details.

My Physician-Authored Blog

My first attempt at blogging can be found at Contract Doctor. This is a WordPress.com blog. This means it is free to set up and is hosted by WordPress. It was very easy to get that going. I still post there occasionally. The content there is mostly related to physician employment agreements, interviewing and negotiating contracts.

This blog (Vital Physician Executive) is a WordPress.org blog and is hosted by Bluehost. There are nominal costs in doing so. But the flexibility is much greater in the design of the blog. And there are multiple “plugins” that can be added to enhance the functionality of the site.

There are hundreds of “themes” that can be used to determine the appearance of a blog. Some themes are free. Premium themes are available through WordPress or by third-party vendors. I decided to go with the Get Noticed theme created and supported by Michael Hyatt when I started out.

The appearance of the Get Noticed theme is nice, and very customizable. Plus, is also fairly easy to add other features, like landing pages and the ability to transact business, if needed.

I have also installed the following plugins:

• Akismet  is an anti-spam service to protect the site;
• Disqus Comment System replaces the WordPress comment system to manage blog comments;
• MonsterInsights to enable integration with Google Analytics;
• Mailchimp for WordPress helps to integrate the MailChimp email service provider forms;
• Popup Ally enables me to add pop-ups to collect email addresses;
• TablePress is used to create tables like the one below; and,
• Yoast SEO helps with content analysis and search engine optimization.

Although I have listed web sites in the above list, all of the plugins are actually accessed and installed from within WordPress.

Other Physician-Authored Blogs

The table below lists most of the blogs I have actually visited. I find many of them to be worth subscribing to. My favorites are listed right here:

1. The White Coat Investor
2. Future Proof MD
3. Physician on FIRE
4. Investing Doc
5. The Happy MD

[table id=1 /]

The table is in no particular order. I have another 20 sites that I will list on a future post, once I have had a chance to review them in more detail. The sites listed are all fairly active with multiple posts within the past month or so.

The White Coat Investor is one of the more well-known and established finance blogs for physicians. It has been around since 2009. The author, James M. Dahle, has written a book of some acclaim called The White Coat Investor: A Doctor's Guide to Personal Finance and Investing.

I subscribe to all of the listed personal finance blogs because they each take on different financial issues that I find interesting. As a “guest-poster” on Future Proof MD, I have a special fondness for that site and its author.

I have made a feeble attempt to categorize the physician-authored blogs listed. It is easy to identify a site as Personal Finance in nature. But some of the other descriptions are rough approximations of their content at best.

Advice and Request

Check out some of the sites and let me know what you think. Also, send me the name of your favorite physician-authored blog, and I will add it to my growing list.

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And feel free to email me directly at john.jurica.md@gmail.com with any questions about anything.

See you in the next post!