The forum discussions within iMedExchange are only accessible to our verified physician members. However, there was a particularly exciting forum post recently that I wanted to share with everyone. I'm posting this here with permission of the doctor who wrote it.

Wife found a practice thanks to this site!
I was browsing around iMedExchange the day I signed-up and found a physician match service (PracticeMatch) in the resources section.

My wife and I had been wanting to move back to CO for the past several years, but she needed to find a practice as she was not ready to quit practicing yet. Just out of curiosity, I decided to check on positions for her specialty.

Bam, there it was! I printed it off, woke her up, and she called the recruiter the next day. Within a week, she scheduled an interview, flew to CO, and was offered the position.

Congratulations to 'topdoc', his physician wife, and their family! Login to iMedExchange now to search physician jobs, provided by our partner PracticeMatch.

The Washington Society for Addiction Medicine was the first society to use iMedExchange to house a private group for their members. What goes on in groups like that? Anything from a newly elected president outlining his plans, to a retired physician sharing info about a resolution he just submitted, to a doctor offering to carpool to the upcoming conference. Their members benefit from easy access to each other, as well as extended access to physicians around the country. If you're part of a physician association or hospital that could benefit from improved member communication, let us know.

Over the last two weeks the most popular article on iMedExchange has been the Abernathy Group's "The Retirement Mistake Physicians Overlook". Members can login to iMedExchange now to read articles by The Abernathy Group and listen to podcasts recorded exclusively for iMedExchange physicians including "Am I Investing Smarter than Other Physicians" and "Six Investor Pitfalls Physicians Can Avoid". Here's a recent reply to one of The Abernathy Group's iMedExchange articles (reprinted with this physician's approval):

Great post. I am very proud of the fact that The Abernathy Group will be "here" to aid our collective understanding of the market and the forces and psychology that drives it. Being part of the herd is not a good/fun position to be in. Hopefully we will learn enough from you to emerge from the herd and invest our hard earned funds in a far more efficient, safe and profitable manner.

iMedExchange member Dr Jeff Shilt is a pediatric surgeon and multiple Ironman finisher. He was recently profiled by MDNG where he discussed his Ironman training, medical practice and motivation. iMedExchange members can read and comment on the article here. Non-members can read the article on MDNG.
Dr. J also has a great blog about his training.

On iMedExchange, physician members can create their own groups. They can be public (open to all iMedExchange members), or private (by invitation/acceptance only). Within these groups the members have forum discussions, post files to share, send messages to other members, and can get notified of new group activity. One of our members, Secretwave, created a private group called Residency Rants where members can "gripe and moan about life in residency". iMedExchange members can find this group in the group directory. Other than participating in iMedExchange, Secretwave has his own blog where he recently wrote about a resident getting fired.

If you're a physician who has a clinical, business, or personal interest that you'd like to create a group for, login to iMedExchange now and start connecting with colleagues who share your passion.

We have some really interesting physicians as members of iMedExchange, and since those of you that aren't members don't get to hear from them, we'll continue to profile some of them in our blog. Today I'd like to introduce you to Sheldon Alter, MD. Sheldon is a retired physician who lives in Florida.

How did you get into Occupational Medicine? Actually, I hadn't originally planned on practicing Occupational Medicine. I was practicing Anesthesiology when I developed heart trouble and was told that if I wanted to see my children graduate high school I better get into a less stressful specialty. I was fortunate to land a position as Associate Medical Director for Texas Instruments, essentially taking care of their employees for their second largest division worldwide. I took courses in Occupational Medicine, learned "everything I could", and became very active in the field. I became Board Certified in Preventive and Environmental Medicine in the specialty of Occupational Medicine and became a Fellow in the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. I also served as President of the New England Occupational and Environmental Medical Association.

What is one of the things you most enjoyed about Occupational Medicine? Besides the medical care, I loved the challenges of ergonomics and instituted a number of programs, some rather innovative, for our employees. Texas Instruments was most cooperative in allowing me to introduce these programs. Amongst them were work station rotation, exercise breaks during the work time at the work station, hiring an exercise physiologist to define specific programs, high speed cinematography to study ergonomic problems at the work station, and much more. Most of these programs were up and running at TI well before they were highlighted in the media for other companies, mostly located in Japan.

After taking most of the summer off, Poker 2.0 blasted into fall this month with one of the best events yet. While every event spawns new relationships, I was pleased to see a higher-than-usual rate of sharing business cards and sharing business ideas. And with more than 30 in attendance, we hit an all-time high pot size. First place went to Randall Lucas of Voyager Capital. Normally we like to complain when the investors take home the big money, but we'll let Randall off the hook this time since Voyager Capital was such a gracious sponsor of this month's event -- thanks Voyager!! As first-place winner, Randall also earned the pleasure of helping to schlep the remains of the party across the street to the iMedExchange offices. Second place went to poker newby Jacques Crocker of WhiteLabelApps.com. Whether Jacques was really a newby or just hustling the bunch of is unclear... he was sure toying with Randall near the end! Third place winner was Karim Varela of i-booze.com. As a show of support to Karim's pretty-darn-cool company, the beverages for next month's event will be delivered by i-booze. Fourth place went to Galen Ward of eStately.com. Galen also showed good form by hanging around till the bitter end to help schlep!

There are some special surprises in store for next month's event but those will have to remain a secret till then....

We released a new build today that we're pretty excited about. There's a new feature available called My Interests. This means when you login, the top of your My Page shows iMedExchange activities that are customized to your interests. Interests include discussions your peers start, new content in groups you're a member of, and replies to discussions you've participated in. You can also 'subscribe' to forum topics. If you do, any new discussion started in that topic will appear in your 'My Interests'. It's a major step in our members being able to customize iMedExchange to their own preferences.

Today I'd like to introduce Rob Coppedge, CFA, iMedExchange's new Director of Corporate Development. Rob is a great addition to our team. You'll get to know him as he blogs in the near future. In the meantime, here is his bio:

Robert M. Coppedge, CFA
Director of Corporate Development

Mr. Coppedge joined iMedExchange as Director of Corporate Development in September 2008. He is the founder of Faultline Ventures, a firm focused on supporting disruptive innovations in health care services and a former Senior Vice President and Principal at Capitol Health, a venture capital firm specializing in early stage health services investing.

Mr. Coppedge worked at Capitol Health from 1997-2008. His responsibilities included monitoring of portfolio company operations, sourcing new investment opportunities, and building strategic relationships for the firm. In addition, he played an active role in the firm's fundraising activities.

In 2004, Mr. Coppedge served on a special panel of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services which reviewed applications for the Chronic Care Improvement Program, now called Medicare Health Support.

Mr. Coppedge is a founder and Director of the Nashville, Tennessee-based Leadership Health Care and was named its first Volunteer of the Year in 2004.He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts. He is a former member of the development committee of the Phillips Collection's Board of Trust and the Phillips Collection Contemporaries Steering Committee. He served as this group's chair from 2001-2003.

Mr. Coppedge is a former member of the Board of Advisors to National Foundation of Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Mr. Coppedge is a 1997 graduate of Georgetown University's College of Arts and Sciences where he was twice named Georgetown's Outstanding Student in Community Service.

We have some really interesting physicians as members of iMedExchange, and since those of you that aren't members don't get to hear from them, we'll continue to profile some of them in our blog. Today I'd like to introduce you to Thomas Lansen, MD. Dr. Lansen is a neurosurgeon in New York City.

Why did you become a surgeon? I loved (and still love) to study history as an undergraduate, but I didn't want to teach -- so history as a livelihood didn't seem promising. So, looking around, I became interested in chemistry, then in the biochemistry of the brain. I committed to a residency in Psychiatry at the famous Bellevue-New York University program, in order to pursue studies in Biological Psychiatry. However, I had a great rotation as a senior medical student, in Neurosurgery. When I quickly became bored with clinical Psychiatry, I switched to Neurosurgery. I've never regretted the choice.

Is there a certain topic you are passionate about? I'm a one-trick pony. The reform of medical liability tort is vital to the survival of American medicine. Our ability to attract quality students to medicine, the satisfaction of physicians in their work, and the cost of medical care (while actual verdict awards are not that large a percentage of the health care dollar, the endless tests we all order for our legal protection are a huge percentage), all depend on the resolution of this issue.