AMNews -- discussing articles on Sermo
About -
Go to Sermo -
Tips for bloggers -
Help
American Medical News content can now be discussed with your physician colleagues on Sermo, a doctors-only discussion board.
About the program
Sermo gives physicians the ability to quickly exchange thoughts and ideas about journal articles, news or their own experiences, allowing them to validate, refine or spawn new interpretations. The goal is for this accelerated pace of discussion to facilitate translation of research to practice, and help doctors make effective adjustments to the fast-changing demands of medical regulation, practice management and other professional pressures (Read article).
What is Sermo? Sermo is the largest physician online community. Launched in September 2006, it had more than 20,000 members by August 2007, when the AMNews feature was added.
Does it cost anything to join? No. Sermo is free to physician-members, and carries no advertising.
Why did the AMA team with Sermo? "The Sermo community represents an innovative forum for physicians to share their voices with the AMA and discuss emerging issues on the front lines of medicine," said AMA Board of Trustees member Cecil B. Wilson, MD, in announcing the affiliation (Read announcement).
Back to top.
Suggestions for online discussions
The American Medical Association offers the following suggestions for physicians reading or posting comments on blogs or online discussions:
Reading
- Postings that are clinically related should always be accompanied by the exercise of professional judgment and consideration of the specific clinical situation encountered by a physician user, with the utmost consideration for patient safety.
- Postings should not be presumed to fully disclose conflicts of interest of the physician author/poster.
- Postings should not constitute a postmarketing surveillance program.
- Postings should be presumed to contain information that has remained confidential, proprietary or protected from unauthorized access by third parties during the posting process.
Posting
- As with reading material online, postings that are clinically related should always be accompanied by the exercise of professional judgment and consideration of the specific clinical situation described by the physician poster, with the utmost consideration for patient safety and patient privacy.
- Postings should not contain confidential or proprietary information.
- Postings should not include physicians’ personal information. Consider whether use of an established e-mail name will reveal your personal identity.
- Postings should not be presumed to be secure from access by unauthorized readers nor protected by legal privilege against disclosure to third parties.
- Postings should not include defamatory, obscene, threatening, harassing or abusive content, and should not convey any matter that can be construed as infringing on the intellectual property rights of others or invading the personal privacy of any individual.
- Postings should specifically indicate whether they represent the views/opinions of any professional body of which the poster may be a member and which is mentioned in the posting.
- Postings should disclose conflicts of interest of the poster.
Back to top.
Some answers to questions
How do I discuss AMNews articles? Simply click one of the "Discuss on Sermo" links, which appear in several convenient spots in most articles from recent weeks.
How do you select which content is available for discussion? Most recent AMNews articles are available for discussion. Stories from the Business section are not available to discuss. This section focuses on practical practice management advice and is considered an important AMA membership benefit, so it is not publicly available. Letters to the editor and news briefs also do not feature "Discuss" buttons.
What happens when I click "Discuss on Sermo"? If a discussion thread has already started, you will be invited to add your comments. Otherwise, you will have the opportunity to post remarks to initiate a discussion. The discussion thread will automatically include a link back to the article.
I clicked on a link and got a logon screen... Sermo members must log on to participate. If you are not logged on, you will be prompted to do so. First-time participants must create an account.
It says it's for doctors only. How do they know I'm a doctor? Sermo uses a proprietary high-assurance system to authenticate and credential physicians in real-time, and revalidates participants each time they sign in.
I have other questions... Here are some documents with additional information:
I'm having a problem using the "Discuss on Sermo" feature... If your question is about Sermo, please see their contact page.
If your question is about links here at AMNews, or if you have comments or suggestions regarding this service, please contact our tech staff.
Back to top.
| 
Government
