By Joe Sisk and Tommy Welling

You’ve donated to SDN, it’s time to add some style to your sidebar. I’m going to walk you through the basics so you’ll feel comfortable creating your very own animated avatar.

Basic Info:

What is an animated avatar?
Animated avatars are image files, typically .gif format, that have multiple frames set to play in a sequence over time. This gives the appearance of motion.

For your avatar to fit on the SDN forums you’ll need to keep a few principles in mind:
-the maximum file size is 195.5 kb
-the larger the dimensions (xxx by xxx) the larger your file size will be
-the more frames your animation has, the larger your file size will be

There are ways to manipulate both the dimensions and animation length without appreciable loss of quality. These will be discussed later. Read the full story

PRESS RELEASE

The Student Doctor Network forums now have a home for high school and pre-college students seeking advice about the health professions.

At the request of many SDN users, we are proud to launch Student Doctor Network Aspire. Aspire is staffed by moderators and mentors from the medical, dental and pharmacy fields, as well as parents of current students. Aspire provides information to help high school and pre-college students start their health professions career on solid footing.

Current topics include questions of interest to high school and pre-college students, and cover the areas of pharmacy, dentistry, and medicine. Included are descriptive explanations of the paths to each career, brief explanations of each profession as well as specialties, and links to information provided by other professional organizations and agencies.  Read the full story

Press Release

In our first docLive chat, Dr. Harry Rosen, author of The Consult Manual of Internal Medicine, will lead a live discussion wherein he will answer your questions about surviving 3rd year medicine clerkships. During this Sunday, April 20th session, participants will be able to ask Dr. Rosen their questions and receive real-time responses.

The chat session will take place at 8:00pm Eastern Time on SDnet, the SDN Chat Server. A temporary link to the docLive web client will appear in the Clinical Rotations forum at 7:30pm ET. For those wishing to use their own chat client, simply point it to irc.studentdoctor.net:6667 and join #doclive.

Please post in this SDN Forums thread to indicate your plans to attend, as space is limited. Come meet Dr. Rosen and walk away with strategies to make your Medicine rotations go much more smoothly!

By Sean Parrish
Staff Writer

Finding career advice can be a challenge, especially in the complex world of the health professions. Left to navigate the countless details on their own, many pre-health and health professional students wonder if there isn’t a better way. However, there is an answer to this frustration: the Student Doctor Network Mentor Forum.

Designed as a place where students can seek career guidance from experts in many healthcare-related fields, the Mentor Forum is a unique resource. It provides students access to credentialed administrators, faculty, experienced students, and practitioners.

Rather than leaving users to speculate on the value of the advice, SDN verifies the backgrounds of its mentors. At the same time, the Mentor Forum provides specialists in over a dozen different areas to give as broad a range of experience as possible. Through this combination of vetted volunteers and array of expertise, the SDN Mentor Forum sets itself apart.
 

Read the full story

What on the surface appears to be “just another forum” is in fact a lifeline for some. “One of my biggest regrets in college was not finding SDN earlier…seriously,” says SDN member Brandon. (All SDN Forums participants create unique user names, and for the sake of anonymity, have acquiesced to the use of their first names for quotes.)

Yes, they take it that seriously. And for good reason.

According to Lee Burnett, executive director and co-founder of the Student Doctor Network, the SDN Forums have grown to become the largest pre-health and health professional student forums on the Internet.

SDN is operated by the Coastal Research Group, a non-profit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization (which means any monies donated are also a write off for the donor). Entirely run by volunteers, SDN provides numerous Student Doctor Forums, where camaraderie, friendships, and even, rumor has it, marriages, have been formed. In short, there would be no SDN were it not for the many moderators, administrators and advisors that volunteer their time to keep SDN running on task. Read the full story