I started by choosing medical journals with a focus on orthopedics. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the Stone Clinic, and the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics are three such organizations, and their web sites are easy to use. The main flaw with all of these sites is that they are written for orthopedic specialists, so some of the articles are hard to understand. Edheads, on the other hand, is an interactive site with flash animations of hip and knee replacement surgeries. It is directed more toward the layman than the specialist, which makes it easy to follow but also gives it a childish air. Orthoseek.com and Swarm Interactive strike a nice balance between these two extremes. Orthoseek.com contains medical definitions in an easy to use format but does not overwhelm the reader with medical jargon. Swarm Interactive is a wonderful site with animated descriptions of many surgical procedures. It is designed for patient education, so the videos are simple enough to be easy to understand but detailed enough to provide a valuable learning experience. YourSurgery.com is another site that aims to educate patients getting ready to have surgery. Unlike Swarm Interactive, Yoursurgery.com is not a free service. To watch one video costs five dollars, and a year-long membership costs one hundred dollars. I am nevertheless including it on my linkroll because it looks like it could be an invaluable resource to any of my readers who do not mind paying for high-quality information. Last but not least is World Ortho (provider of the image above), a site whose navigation system alone won it high marks in my opinion. Possibly the most interesting piece of information on this site is a series of lecture notes from an Orthopedics class. It was very enriching for me to read them, and I hope my readers will find them equally stimulating.
Showing posts with label IMSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IMSA. Show all posts
3/29/08
Back to the Linkroll: Further Efforts to Increase the Value of my Blog
A few weeks ago, I decided to update my linkroll by trolling through the web in search of high quality sites to link to. I am continuing this charge with my newest post because I want my blog to become more than just a dead-end sink for my own writing. I want to provide links to other quality sites so that my readers will be able to use my blog as a multi-dimensional source of information. As with my previous post, I relied on the Webby Awards and the IMSA criteria to determine what sites were of a quality high enough to link to from my blog.
I started by choosing medical journals with a focus on orthopedics. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the Stone Clinic, and the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics are three such organizations, and their web sites are easy to use. The main flaw with all of these sites is that they are written for orthopedic specialists, so some of the articles are hard to understand. Edheads, on the other hand, is an interactive site with flash animations of hip and knee replacement surgeries. It is directed more toward the layman than the specialist, which makes it easy to follow but also gives it a childish air. Orthoseek.com and Swarm Interactive strike a nice balance between these two extremes. Orthoseek.com contains medical definitions in an easy to use format but does not overwhelm the reader with medical jargon. Swarm Interactive is a wonderful site with animated descriptions of many surgical procedures. It is designed for patient education, so the videos are simple enough to be easy to understand but detailed enough to provide a valuable learning experience. YourSurgery.com is another site that aims to educate patients getting ready to have surgery. Unlike Swarm Interactive, Yoursurgery.com is not a free service. To watch one video costs five dollars, and a year-long membership costs one hundred dollars. I am nevertheless including it on my linkroll because it looks like it could be an invaluable resource to any of my readers who do not mind paying for high-quality information. Last but not least is World Ortho (provider of the image above), a site whose navigation system alone won it high marks in my opinion. Possibly the most interesting piece of information on this site is a series of lecture notes from an Orthopedics class. It was very enriching for me to read them, and I hope my readers will find them equally stimulating.
I started by choosing medical journals with a focus on orthopedics. The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the Stone Clinic, and the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics are three such organizations, and their web sites are easy to use. The main flaw with all of these sites is that they are written for orthopedic specialists, so some of the articles are hard to understand. Edheads, on the other hand, is an interactive site with flash animations of hip and knee replacement surgeries. It is directed more toward the layman than the specialist, which makes it easy to follow but also gives it a childish air. Orthoseek.com and Swarm Interactive strike a nice balance between these two extremes. Orthoseek.com contains medical definitions in an easy to use format but does not overwhelm the reader with medical jargon. Swarm Interactive is a wonderful site with animated descriptions of many surgical procedures. It is designed for patient education, so the videos are simple enough to be easy to understand but detailed enough to provide a valuable learning experience. YourSurgery.com is another site that aims to educate patients getting ready to have surgery. Unlike Swarm Interactive, Yoursurgery.com is not a free service. To watch one video costs five dollars, and a year-long membership costs one hundred dollars. I am nevertheless including it on my linkroll because it looks like it could be an invaluable resource to any of my readers who do not mind paying for high-quality information. Last but not least is World Ortho (provider of the image above), a site whose navigation system alone won it high marks in my opinion. Possibly the most interesting piece of information on this site is a series of lecture notes from an Orthopedics class. It was very enriching for me to read them, and I hope my readers will find them equally stimulating.
3/3/08
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.
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.
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