doc2doc.bmj.com, BMJ Group’s global professional online community for doctors, has been running for two and a half years now. In this time, under editors Luisa Dillner (head of BMJ New Product Development) and David Payne (editor of bmj.com), the community has thrived. There are now more than 45k members from all over the world and the site gets 60-70k page views a month.

The site has both closed and open clinical forums. The closed clinical forums are doctor only areas whereas the open clinical forums are areas for all members including medical students. The editorial team has appointed external champions from a variety of clinical disciplines to help the flow of specialty specific clinical discussion. These are senior doctors who guide and advise the community on topics pertaining to their expertise.

Reflecting medics’ interests in more than just clinical practice, doc2doc also has several off duty forums for non clinical discussions. These include journal club, book club, travel, cycling, medical parents’, and musical medics’ forums. Members can also request the creation of closed members’ forums for their own exclusive group of colleagues or friends.

Many members ask to become doc2doc bloggers. doc2doc blogs and bloggers are widely promoted on the site, on the bmj.com homepage, to doc2doc’s 3,000 twitter followers, and to doc2doc’s 1,150 facebook fans.
And for those members and browsers interested in more than forums and blogs, there is the doc2doc elibrary. In here there are pages of BMJ Group resources on NHS reform and on crisis zone medicine, as well as all doc2doc’s published ebooks including a survival guide for junior doctors, a survival guide for medical students, and our latest e-publication, The BMJ Guide to Commissioning.

With something to interest every medic in every country across the world, the doc2doc team is confident the site’s success will continue for many years to come.

Sabreena Malik, clinical community editor, BMJ