Information blast — this was the very phrase that came into my mind the moment I opened the SF Medical School Life Examiner main page. It seemed like some sort of a web portal leading to many different kinds of information and web content such as videos, news articles and commentaries, personality tests and assessments, book reviews, medical students, information on infectious diseases, entries on the health care system, and many others. I would dare say it is intended for and highly helpful not only to medical students, but also to other medical practitioners, researchers, interested readers, and other members of the medical education community.
What’s to like about Examiner
What?s special about this blog is that it includes many different types of content and information with different angles under an umbrella topic: Medicine. The author includes her political views, as well as her opinion on current issues in relation to health and medicine. I particularly liked her entry on the raids to pharmacies regarding the issue of Michael Jackson?s death, where she said that the raids are “justified” but “worrisome.” Besides the articles on current issues, there are also information and content helpful to medical students and other interested audience such as personality assessment tests and results. At the top of each article, there are buttons for fast and easy printing, comments, sending through electronic mail, and subscription. Beside the array of entries is a side bar containing links to contents arranged according to categories. At the top are tabs for easy navigation.
Areas for improvement
With the layout of the main page, however, the blog has the tendency to look cluttered. I must admit getting a little disoriented for a couple of seconds before being able to find the articles that I wanted to review and look at. For a while, I didn?t know how and where to start. The lead in paragraphs for the array of entries are a little too short and the division of the page into three columns didn?t work quite well, with the “main content” on the left column.
