Reasons to Begin Blogging as a Doctor

Updated August 23rd, 2023

If you are a practicing physician like me, you probably work long hours and also have a lot of responsibilities. Free time can be a rare commodity, and if you have a family, hobbies or other commitments, it might be even rarer. So why would you even think about to start blogging as a doctor?

It may seem as unnecessary extra work and an additional burden. However, there are several reasons for starting a blog as a physician. In this article, I want to share my personal experience and discuss why it can be a good idea to start a medical blog but also write about difficulties and challenges.

woman in blue scrub suit using macbook pro

The Main Reasons to Start Blogging as a Doctor

Depending on your personal interests and situation, the reasons can be manifold. In the following, I would like to share my personal motivation and main reasons in brief. Below, I will discuss each reason in more detail. In the following paragraphs, I will discuss 6 reasons why you should start a blog as a medical professional:

Educate others by sharing professional experiences
Educate yourself by preparing information in a structured manner
Learn about new topics and stay up to date
Practice writing
Build a personal brand
Discover and develop additional income streams

Naturally, this list is not exhaustive and you may have your own individual items to add to or to remove from this list. In the following sections, you will find more information for each of these points.

The Blogging Physician: Educate Others by Sharing Experiences

In the university setting, the three main tasks of a medical doctor are:

To Treat
To Research
To Teach

What does this mean?

The first thing that may come to mind when you think of a practicing physician is diagnosing diseases and treating patients. However, these things need to be learned and practiced. Furthermore, new treatment options or diagnostic approaches can only be identified by doing research.

As a medical doctor, you may have specific knowledge that can help others to be better physicians. Maybe this information can even help patients to understand their disease or treatment better. Although you can pass on your valuable knowledge to colleagues or medical students, your range is very limited that way. In addition, you could write a book containing all your knowledge. But this is a lengthy and time-consuming process.

However, by posting specific articles to your blog, you can immediately share your knowledge to the whole world. Are you providing new and well-prepared information? Use your blog to get your knowledge out to others that may be searching for it.

teach dice ornament on table blogging as a doctor

My Personal Experience in Sharing Knowledge via Blogging

When I started doing research in radiology, I was looking for guides on how to write a scientific paper in radiology (not only by using ChatGPT). Although there are few publications on this subject, they lacked specific instructions and personal opinions. Therefore, after publishing several scientific papers, I decided to pass on what I have learned. I gathered all my personal notes and put all the information into an structured blog article: “How to write a scientific paper in radiology“.

Now that I have published this article, I can see how many people from all over the world read it every week. Knowing that I may have helped others take a step into the scientific world is very satisfying. That way I´m encouraged to write new articles that further help educating others and also myself.

Educate Yourself by Preparing Information

During med school, I learned a lot of things and I forgot many of them. However, one of the most important things I took away was that I learned and understood any subject best when I tried to explain it to others. I have internalized this skill and applied it in many ways in my daily work.

For instance, preparing for any exam (such as any medical board exam) can be very efficient, if you are learning with someone that you try to explain different topics. Maybe you can even just try to express a sophisticated topic or difficult pathomechanism in your own words. Besides exams, this skill can be helpful in many different ways. Try to explain the hypothesis or main results of your scientific study to a non-medicine friend or your significant other.

By thinking about how to explain something to others and putting it into your own words, you will understand and memorize any topic better.

Now you can take this even further. If you want to put a topic into written word, you will have to form an outline and make a plan on how you want to present everything. If you just start typing without a plan, the resulting text may be difficult to follow.

Therefore, writing a blog article about a topic you like, will consolidate your whole relation to the subject matter. And after writing, you will not only be an expert in the topic discussed. You will also have created a valuable reference for anybody that seeks more information.

man holding book blogging as a doctor medical blog

Learn About New Topics by Blogging as a Doctor

Working in medicine requires you to constantly adapt to change and be open to learning new things. Some things can be exciting and fun to learn, while others can be tedious. Depending on the area you work in, there may be several ways to continue your education. I have colleagues who study business administration, law, artificial intelligence, or statistics on the side. Although I am primarily a radiologist, I have learned to use several programming languages and can call myself a certified medical statistician.

If you are writing blog articles, you will not only need an organized way to structure your information but you will also need to be up to date and learn new things. In other words, if you are the one that is providing information on new topics, you will always be a step ahead of others in your field.

Additionally, starting a blog requires you to learn several new things unrelated to medicine. From web hosting and design to keyword research and search engine optimization (SEO). If you are open for these things, you will not only learn a lot but also understand the whole internet on a whole new level.

So as a brief conclusion of the prior paragraphs: Why should you start a blog as medical professional? To learn and to educate others with your specific knowledge.

New Things I Learned while Blogging as a Medical Doctor

I always like to try and learn new things, which is one of my main personal reasons why I started this project. There are so many exciting things, that can and should be written about.

For instance, the rise of artificial intelligence. In every medical field, there are already AI algorithms in place that facilitate many processes. Now there also is ChatGPT and millions of people are using it. I use it daily myself and it is a very powerful tool for various applications. So I decided to summarize my experiences in how to use ChatGPT in scientific writing. As it is important to me, I did not focus on exploiting the automatic text generation but tried to explain how a responsible approach can facilitate many steps in scientific research.

Furthermore, as a tech-savvy radiologist, I always loved having customizable gear. And when I finished researching which mouse I want for my radiology workstation, I noticed that I collected a lot of valuable information and compared different products. The conversion into a blog article was not too much work. And by doing so, I have killed several birds with one stone: I deepened my knowledge, I shared my knoweldge, I found the best mouse for my needs and I am even able to earn some money, if somebody decides to buy one of my suggestions through an affiliate link.

woman writing on a notebook beside teacup and tablet computer learning to write blogging as a doctor

Practice Writing

If you are a native English speaker, you have probably noticed this by now: English is not my first language – its German. In fact, I was pretty bad in English during high school. However, as a medical student and now working in radiology, I have found that some of the best resources for medical information are in English.

Taking it a step further, I always wanted to do medical research. To do that, you not only need to understand English, but you also need to be able to express yourself and write about your scientific topic. And even if you are not doing medical research, you may need to write reports or phyiscian’s letters.

Writing a blog article, that can be read (and judged) by people all over the world, can be a great way to practice your writing skills. You may enable comments for direct feedback. Furthermore, there are several tools that show, how long people stay on each of your pages. That way, you have a metric that shows, if and how readers react to your posts.

Ultimately, the ability to properly convey information in text can help you in many ways – both personally and professionally.

Build a Personal Brand by Starting a Medical Blog

A blogging physician who shares experiences and opinions in the medical field must always remember one thing:

You are putting your name and expertise on the things you publish.

What does this mean for you? You have to stand by your opinions and you should be aware that you can also make yourself vulnerable. Additionally, there are professional ethics considerations to be taken into account. You are blogging as a healthcare professional and should not harm your professional image.

By publishing your interests and articles, you are also publishing a certain image of yourself. You can utilize and leverage this image into a personal brand that others associate with certain topics, opinions and/or services.

If you want to establish a certain direction and image for your personal brand, you may need to plan ahead. Posting random articles can complicate this process. So you may need to outline what you want to accomplish with your blog. Maybe you just love to write and share your experiences and knowledge? Or maybe you want to create a side hustle with additional income through courses or services?

In either case, be aware of the image that your posts are transporting and if you have more sophisticated plans, plan ahead.

Note: Many tutorials and YouTube videos promote the idea of a “faceless” blog. That means not showing your identifying information. Additionally, if you start a blog, you will stumble upon “AI-powered” mass production of blog articles. As a blogging healthcare professional, your strengths are your authority and the value of your personal experience. Being honest, credible and authentic will provide real value that will always rise above faceless AI-generated information.

Earn Money Blogging as a Doctor

Starting a medical blog does not require any major investment. However, if you want certain web hosting, SEO tools, themes, keyword tools or the like, things may start to cost you money. If you are just doing it as a hobby, this may not be a problem. But if you are providing valuable information on your blog pages, there are several ways you can use to get some money back.

Ways to earn money blogging as a medical doctor include:

Showing ads on your pages
Affiliate marketing
Promoting or selling your own products (e.g. books)
Offering courses or coachings

There are countless blog articles out there that provide information on how to monetize your own blog. It is a whole business in itself. Therefore, I will not go into too much detail. This article is about reasons to start blogging as a doctor. And creating a side income can definitely be a valid reason to start a blog. As a healthcare professional, you have a great advantage: a specific niche of knowledge that is relevant to many people around the world.

By providing valuable information and advertising on your site, you can generate enough revenue to cover your expenses. If you want to take it a step further, you can create courses, products or even books based on your knowledge. If you have already an established personal brand by running a healthcare oriented blog, you can use this as a platform to promote and sell your products.