Building a Better Blog: Getting My Linkroll Up To Date

This week, I again chose not to write a specific blog post, but instead opted to search around the web to find excellent sites that I could add to my linkroll (on the right). Using the Webby Awards and the IMSA criteria, I was able to find high quality personal blogs, Surgical Societies, and other useful sources of information relevant to orthopedics. Ten of these excellent sites are now imbedded in my linkroll and arranged alphabetically. I am sure you will be happy with both their ease of navigation and quality of material. These sites are not maintained by amateurs – they are of the highest caliber and I am extremely happy to link to them through my blog.

Alphabetically, the first of these sites is the Orthopedics page of About.com. It is a bit busy with advertisements, but the content is written in an easy manner and the site is very user-friendly. Next is Dr. Davis’ Back and Wrist Pain Blog, which I left a comment on last week. Dr. Davis’ blog is very informative, but he uses it to promote his own practice so sometimes readers may feel like they are being advertised to indirectly. Netsurgery.com is an excellent source of videos and articles on many aspects of surgery, although the content on their site could probably be about twice the size. The North American Spine Society is, as the name suggests, our continent’s premier society for spine care awareness. Their site is beautifully done, and I found the information on their site to be very professional. Unfortunately, the formatting does not work properly with Firefox on the Mac. The Southern California Orthopedic Institute is a group with a broader interest in Orthopedics (they do not limit themselves to the spine) located in Van Nuys, California. It is hard for me to think of anything I would criticize on this site, as they have been updating and perfecting it since 1995. Spine University is an excellent source of information specifically regarding the spine, as is Spine-Health.com. They are both easy to read since they are directed at patients, but I think Spine-Health was a little busy. As far as information is concerned, though, they are both excellent. The American Association for the Surgery of Trauma is a group dedicated to teaching the proper treatment of traumatic injuries requiring surgery. Many such injuries require orthopedic surgery, so I deemed this site relevant to my blog. Their site is directed at surgeons more than patients, to the information can be a bit hard to read, but it is quality nonetheless. The American Medical Association is one of the foremost societies for physicians in America, and their site reflects that fact. Like the AAST though, their site is directed at doctors rather than patients, so the site can be hard to use. The Knee Foundation is dedicated to raising money for helping those with knee problems, so their site is focused more on explaining the need for aid than providing information to patients. Trauma.org is an organization very similar to the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma, and their site includes some great photos and videos of trauma surgery. Last, but not least, is Wheeless’ Textbook of Orthopedics, which is an outstanding site full of and encyclopedic amount of information on Orthopedics. The site is very intuitive, and is elegant in design. Navigation is as easy as clicking on a body part represented by the skeleton at right (note: clicking the skeleton here will merely link to the Wheeless' site, clicking on it there will direct you to the area of your interest). If anything, tere is simply too much information on this site, so getting lost or distracted is a definite possibility.

I hope you enjoy these links, as they have proved to be very helpful to me in my general search for information on Orthopedics. I will certainly be citing them in the next few weeks, and I enthusiastically look forward to doing so.