Pallimed Birthday - Lucky 13

by Christian Sinclair

Anniversaries are a fun time to celebrate, but the fun ones end in numbers in 0 or 5. For other anniversaries, it is a good time to take stock, reflect on the past and look towards the future.

Today is our 13th anniversary of Pallimed, which Dr. Drew Rosielle started in 2005 when blogs were THE thing to do in social media. We also spent many of those early years helping people understand the power of communication through social media with projects like #hpm chat on Twitter, encouraging tweeting from conferences and the advocacy power of our Pallimed Facebook page. With that focus, we have drifted away from original content being the main thrust of our efforts, but have still strived to create good content with strong posts from great writers like Lizzy Miles and Drew Rosielle among others. We are still dedicated to the website and will continue to post always.

Of course, this effort does not happen without the work of many people. I am indebted to Lizzy Miles (Pallimed editor), Megan Mooney-Sipe (Lead Facebook Contributor), Meredith MacMartin and Renee Berry (#hpm chat) for leading some of the core projects of Pallimed. A big thank you to other volunteers who have helped with various projects in the past year including: Jeanette Ross, Kristi Newport, Ashley Deringer, Gary Hsin, Joe Hannah, Lori Ruder, Niamh van Meines, Emily Escue, Ben Skoch, Jen Bose, Liz Gundersen, David Buxton, SarahScottDietz, Sonia Malhotra and Vivian Lam.

Since Pallimed has always been a volunteer effort, we are of course on the lookout for great new volunteers to join us and if you have been a part of Pallimed in the past, we would always welcome you back. If you have a great idea for a series of posts, podcast, videocast, journal club, book review, film review, journal article review, this is a great place to publish it. If you are not the creative type, there are a ton of admin projects that need to get done behind the scenes. Many hands make light work and I can tell you it is a blast being part of a team that makes a big difference...together. We have an audience of over 50,000 across all of our platforms so if there is something that needs to be said, we can help you say it. If you are not sure what to say, I have plenty of writing assignments where I am looking for writers. As a bonus, this work can be used for academic promotion if that is something you need. I've seen work for Pallimed get cited in promotion applications!

So the state of the blog is steady. We are staying the course, but always on the lookout for other smart, dedicated, passionate people who want to make a difference for palliative care and hospice. Let me know if that is you.

Christian Sinclair, MD, FAAHPM is the Editor-in-Chief of Pallimed. He is always surprised he wrote the most for Pallimed when he had infant twins in his house.