Five Days until Grand Rounds

As you can see, this whole Grand Rounds thing has taken over my blog life, at least temporarily. The Doctor Anonymous blog has kind of become "the crash course on being a GR host" blog, at least until next week.

For anyone curious, here are the poll results as of this posting:

• Which do you prefer? (69 total votes)

• Grand Rounds with a theme: 42%

• Grand Rounds without a theme: 58%

• Ideal number of Grand Rounds links each week? (75 votes)

• Less than 25: 35%

• From 25-30: 47%

• From 31-35: 9%

• From 36-40: 4%

• More than 40: 5%

I got a few more submissions Wednesday. From what people have told me, this is par for the course (sorry for the golf lingo). I read a few more GR postings from the past few months, just to get a feel of how things have been done in the past.

And, in fact, a similar discussion on the number of GR links occurred about nine months ago (look here, here, here, and here). This was before I was even blogging. I don't know if it's good or bad that this discussion is coming up again. Because, the points that have been brought up this time were the same as back then.

Now, Nick is probably going to think that I'm stalking him, but in doing more background research on GR, I wondered how this entire thing got started - so I went back into the Blogborygmi archives.

Did you know that Grand Rounds was almost called things like "Carnival of the Caregivers," or, "Melee of the Medics," or, "Party of the Providers," or, "Hulabaloo of the Healers?" How different would things have turned out if one of those names were chosen?

Here are some other things I found:
August 6, 2004: Now, a certain fraction of medi-blog posts are too esoteric for the lay reader, but actually not that many. And that's part of the appeal: Each week authors would pick a post that general blog readers could understand and enjoy, and a rotating volunteer blogger would host the links. What gets linked would be at the host's discretion -- hopefully a nice mix of quality patient stories, science news, and policy points.

September 13, 2004: If you're a medical blogger (which so many of you are), and if you're interested in reaching more nonmedical readers, listen to this: I've received a lot of positive feedback about the idea for "Grand Rounds" (Carnival of the Caregivers) -- a series of "best-of-the-week" posts from around the medical blogosphere, with rotating hosts.

September 28, 2004 (The First Grand Rounds): Welcome to the debut of Grand Rounds, the weekly summary of the best of the medical blogosphere. It's our hope that this new feature will introduce a wider audience to the expanding array of talented doctors, nurses, techs and students writing online today. This week, we've got a roundup of new medical reports, opinions on current health topics, and a look into several medical specialties. Plus, some stories from caregivers to make you laugh, cry, or spur the contemplation of your mortality.

This is all great stuff. Definitely puts some things into perpective for me. As little as two years ago, it seems to me that the medical blogosphere was a little blip on the map. Now, we're having discussions that GR is getting too large? Hmmmm. Interesting....

Stay tuned: My Grand Rounds "Pre-Rounds" interview with "the man" Dr. Nick Genes should be coming to a Medscape site near you soon....