Hero of the Week: Doc Gurley

Doc Gurley first caught my attention with her blog post, 5 Reasons to Give a Gift to a Homeless Person. Personally, as a once bleeding heart who feels I now "know better" than to give money to panhandlers on the street and subway, I really enjoyed the piece. I wanted to write her and thank her for such a thoughtful article, but then I started clicking around her website and realized I needed to ping my editor.

Doc Gurley is our Tonic News Hero of the Week! Dr. Jan Gurley is "a Board-certified Internist physician and the only Harvard Medical School graduate to have been awarded a Shoney’s Ten-Step Pin for documented excellence in waitressing." Yes, the entire site is this clever. I laughed as I navigated through her blog posts, all under the heading "Posts From an Insane Heathcare System," on everything from How to Break Bad News to multiple features about "lost" tampons (the video is hysterical and secretly very informative).

How can a doctor blog about her patients' problems without breaking confidentiality rules? From the site:

Be sure that if there is a “patient” mentioned, any characteristics that could be identifying have been changed — age, gender, organ, personality, and, especially, nostril shape. So are we talking pure fiction here? Well, in many ways, yes. However, recurring issues and problems in health care are often swept under the carpet, and “confidentiality” has become an excuse in health writing for erasing all kinds of uncomfortable subjects (read: patient experiences).

Brilliant. In fact, you can browse her site for answers to your own health questions, or email her and ask her yourself. Naturally, she encourages readers to see a physician in person if they think they have a problem.

Congratulations, Doc Gurley. You make the world a better place.