your future doctor is on Facebook and Twitter. right now.
A large number of U.S. medical schools say students have posted unprofessional material on Web sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter, but few schools have adequate policies in place for dealing with such behavior, a new study found.
Medical students using Facebook and Twitter can get expelled Of 78 U.S. medical schools that responded to a survey, 60% reported incidents of students posting unprofessional content online, including material that was classified as profane (52% of the respondents), discriminatory (48%), sexually suggestive (38%), or violated patient confidentiality (13%), according to a report in the Sept. 23 Journal of the American Medical Association.
Chretien and her colleagues acknowledged that Web-based technologies that encourage user generated content, such as social networking sites, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites (often referred to collectively as “Web 2.0″), have led to innovative tools for healthcare and education.
“However, the social contract between medicine and society expects physicians to embody altruism, integrity, and trustworthiness,” they wrote. “Furthermore, ethical and legal obligations to maintain patient confidentiality have unique repercussions. Yet, defining unprofessionalism online is challenging; there are no formal guidelines for physicians.”
Of the 130 U.S. medical schools they identified, 78 (60%) responded to a survey on the issue in March and April of 2009, and 47 of these reported one or more incidents of students posting unprofessional content online.
The majority of patient confidentiality violations involved blog posts that described clinical experiences with enough detail that patients could potentially be identified.
The authors suggested a number of steps that medical schools could take to address the issue:
* The formal professionalism curriculum should include a digital media component, which could include instruction on managing the “digital footprint,” such as electing privacy settings on social networking sites and performing periodic Web searches of oneself.
* Relevant laws related to patient privacy should be incorporated into instruction.
* Assessments of professional competence could include assessment of a student’s digital footprints.
* Medical school residents and faculty should model appropriate Web 2.0 behaviors.
* Faculty should learn the capabilities of the various Web 2.0 applications, if they don’t already understand them.
* Future research should examine existing Internet usage policies, identify policies that work well, and determine the effects of specific policies and classes on students’ online behaviors and professional development.
* Students, residents, and faculty should discuss what medical professionalism means in the era of Web 2.0.
~ by Chris Emery on KevinMD.com
so, why not use your internet superpowers for good?
Kim McAllister, over at Better Health, gives some good reasons why health professionals should start a blog. But it shouldn’t just be limited to blogging, but the entire spectrum of social media tools, which give health professionals a powerful way to engage both patients and colleagues.
I recently gave a talk to the folks over at the New England Journal of Medicine, discussing the intersection between medical practice and social media. One point I repeatedly made was that it’s to a health professional’s benefit to have some sort of online presence. Not only to engage and provoke discussion, but also to make them pro-active in the information associated with them when their name is Googled.
More patients will be searching for doctors and hospitals via search engines, and being active in blogs, Facebook and Twitter allows you to define your online reputation. Going forward, this will be one of the more important reasons why doctors, nurses, and medical institutions should have a robust social media presence.
~ also from KevinMD.com
I for one vote to keep the blogs running. In the internet age the more actual doctor sites that are out there the better so that patients can receive real information and not be misinformed by rumors and old-wives tales that people put up on the world wide web. Great example that comes to mind is WebMD and jenniferhawke.com : )