The 10-Year Celebration Continues: Dr. Sean Marks, Fast Facts Editor-in-Chief, Shares His Passion for a Decade of Publishing and Updating Fast Facts

Grassroots.  Collective.  Meticulous.  Practical.  Accessible. Maybe even anarchistic?

These are some of the terms that come to my mind when I think about Fast Facts.  What amazes me about this project is that it has been going strong for over 20 years and yet there is no larger sponsor or organization who can claim ownership over it.  Fast Facts is the committed work of all of us in an emerging medical specialty who saw a dire need for better educational materials to allow the generalist clinician to provide better care for patients with serious illness.  Instead of waiting around for a larger organization to tell us how to do it, the originators of Fast Facts just threw the content out there for free and let it speak for itself.  You’d think an undertaking such as this would fizzle out without a larger funding source or organizational structure after a couple of years. But Fast Facts just keeps growing stronger year after year, decade after decade.  The success of this project is a testament to the large audience of clinicians in North America and beyond that wants to serve their patients with serious illness better.  In other words, the success of Fast Facts tells me that there are clinicians of copious specialties and disciplines who care.  You don’t need slick web-designs and publications to make this work, just solid, peer-reviewed, evidence-based content that reaches people when they need it.  In a medical and academic system that can seem impenetrable and financially driven, the collective spirit of Fast Facts continues to inspire me, and I hope it inspires you too.

We cannot reflect on what has allowed us to publish over 500 Fast Facts over the years without recognizing some specific individuals and parties.  In true Fast Fact style, below is a bullet point list:

• Dr. Eric Warm for dreaming up the idea.
• Dr. David Weissman for springboarding the project with his unique vision, initiative, and extraordinary skills in educational messaging.
• Dr. Charles von Gunten and the Journal of Palliative Medicine – all new Fast Facts are cross-published in JPM; we can’t underestimate how this added academic clout to the project.
• PCNOW – for giving Fast Facts a secure online home for over a decade, for their tireless promotion of Fast Facts, and for making it easy for thousands of members to access the content for free.
• Dr. Drew Rosielle – for his keen intellect and editing prowess and his prolonged commitment to Fast Facts
• Dr. Robert Arnold
• The peer-review panel who painstakingly review every Fast Fact for content accuracy and relevance.  Fundamentally, this is why our readers trust this resource I believe.
• Our employers for allowing us to squirrel away hours of time to research, review, write, edit, re-edit, re-re-edit, and share this information.
• Our readers for honoring their patients by seeking out the best evidence-based practices to optimally serve those who face scary and often bewildering clinical issues.

Let’s see if we keep this going to 1000!

Sean Marks