Thanks to everyone who has read JailMedicine this past year!  I have to admit that when I started writing JailMedicine, I never thought it would be as successful as it has been. Total readership should exceed 200,000 by the time of my second year anniversary later this month.  This just goes to show that Correctional Medicine is growing and, in my opinion, is poised to become medicine’s Next-Big-Thing!  I am especially grateful for the help and free advice that Lorry Schoenly has given me from the very outset.  Thanks, Lorry!

Today, I recap the Top-Five Most Read articles of 2013 and my resolutions for the New Year.

Top Five Most Read JailMedicine Articles of 2013

1.  Abscess Incision and Drainage, a Photographic Tutorial

2. What is the Most Cost-Effective Treatment for Genital Warts? The Answer May Surprise You!

3. What’s the most cost-effective way to treat scabies? The answer might surprise you . .

4. Insulin Dosing Made Simple

5. Diuretics for Swollen Legs? Not!

Honorable mention goes to Judges Practicing Medicine—The Right Response, which was Academy Insider’s second most accessed article of the year.

Another Honorable mention goes to Book Review. Maximum Insecurity: A Doctor in the Supermax. Bill Wright, the author of this book, gave out more than 80 free PDF copies Maximum Insecurity to readers of JailMedicine.  By the way, Maximum Insecurity is now available for purchase at Amazon.com here.

My 2014 New Year Resolutions for Jail Medicine (and please hold me to them)!

1.  Write More Often.  I have been hampered in the frequency of my writing, especially towards the end of this tumultuous year by, well, work!  My goal for the coming year is for one article a week, at a minimum.

2. Write more of what gets read.  Notice the most-read articles above tend to be either tutorials or about cost effectiveness.  I will write more in both of these genres.

3.  Invite guest writers.  There are many other excellent thinkers, writers and editorialists out there in the Correctional Medicine community.  I’m going to find them.

4.  Bring F.O.A.M. to Correctional Medicine.  F.O.A.M. stands for Free Online Access to Medicine.  This is a movement begun in the Emergency Medicine community (my old specialty) that works to bring together medical education opportunities that are online and free.  Much of the ER material already available online is easily applicable to corrections.  I want JailMedicine to be the access point for this material.

5.  Create a secure Guideline Exchange.  By far, the most common emails I get from JailMedicine readers are requests for the various policies and guidelines that I reference in my articles.  And properly so!  Writing medical policies for jails and prisons is hard work.  It seems counter-productive for someone needing a policy on alcohol withdrawal, say, or hypertension, to have to create it from scratch when I and many others have already written them and are willing to share. Besides that, when I review guidelines and policies written by others and compare them to mine, I invariably find areas that are better thought out or better written than my own–and therefore my clinical policies improve.  I have never met anyone who did not think that a Guideline Exchange was a good idea.  The trick is the site security–that’s the piece I need to figure out.

Do you have suggestions on how to improve JailMedicine?  Please comment or email!