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December 1998
Volume 62 |
Number 12
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RESIDENTS' REVIEW
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| Getting the Most
Out of Electronic Mailing Lists |
Edmundo D. Delgado, D.O.
Electronic mailing lists have been popular ways for groups to
communicate using the Internet. There are close to 65 mailing
lists that relate to anesthesiology. Mailing list topics range
from general anesthesia, pain management and critical care medicine,
to resident issues and ASA activities, just to highlight a few.
After you join an Internet mailing list, you have the ability
to reach hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people with your same
interests. Everyone on that list will receive all messages posted
almost instantaneously. This is an automated process and requires
little to no human input. So, theoretically, you can post a question
on how to treat a hemophiliac with malignant hyperthermia awaiting
surgery and have several answers waiting for you the next morning
before treating the patient.
To join most lists, a command such as "SUBSCRIBE (listname)
(your name)" is required in the body of the e-mail. Note that
all lists have a different e-mail for commands and subscriptions
and a different one for posts. After subscribing to the list,
you will receive an e-mail acknowledging your subscription with
specific information about the list. This message also will contain
information that may be useful at a later time.
Keep in mind that mailing lists are not peer-reviewed and are
not monitored for medical accuracy. The opinions presented may
be based on the experiences of its members and not necessarily
on peer-reviewed literature. This is important to remember when
taking advice from members of the list.
Managing Mailing Lists
Depending on the volume and size of the list, your mailbox will
receive an occasional posting or may receive 30 or more postings
per day. To manage high-volume lists, there are a few tricks that
can successfully help.
- Use an e-mail program with filters. Filters are contained
in programs such as Eudora Pro and allow you to search for a
keyword or specific originating e-mail. It also allows you to
store the e-mails in a different mailbox for later reading.
- Avoid multiple subscriptions to mailing lists.
- Create separate mailboxes for each mailing list to avoid
clutter.
- Consider temporarily unsubscribing to lists if you will be
away from the computer for an extended period of time. This
is when subscriber list information on how to subscribe and
unsubscribe will become helpful.
- Subscribe to the digest version. Most lists have a digest
version available. A digest version of a list is a single e-mail
sent on a regular basis, usually daily, and it contains the
entire posting from that period organized by date with an index.
This is a great idea for those lists with very large volumes
and individuals with little time to read every single e-mail
or be interrupted by periodical postings through the day. The
digest is also a good idea if you are not interested in all
the topics presented but wish to search for a specific keyword
or topic.
- Lastly, avoid acting unprofessionally or using profanity
in your postings. You never know who is lurking on the list,
and it could be your boss or, worse yet, a patient.
Spam
Spam is unwanted, unsolicited and usually unrelated and upsetting
e-mails. Spam usually enflames most people subscribing to the
list. The common tendency is to write back with a flame letter.
This, in fact, just clutters the list and is unproductive to the
goals of the list. Most list owners will immediately remove that
e-mail from the list and write to the spammer's service provider
about the misuse of the system in hopes that the spammer's service
is terminated. So before "flaming" the spammer on the list, sit
back and have a cup of java (decaffeinated) and ask the list owner
to take care of it.
Here are two Web sites to get you started:
Edmundo D. Delgado, D.O., is a
CA-3 anesthesiology resident at Yale University School of Medicine,
New Haven, Connecticut.
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