What’s not to ‘like’ about social media?
Alex Isted
Sub-Editor
The world of social media is becoming more and more ingrained in society, as a tool to communicate, share experiences and keep in touch with family and friends. During the 2011 ‘Arab Spring’ it allowed the images of a fruit stand owner assaulted by Tunisian police to go viral, leading to national protests and revolution. A YouTube video entitled ‘It Gets Better’, aimed at motivating gay teenagers to persevere through homophobic bullying, snowballed into a movement inspiring thousands. Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign used almost every form of social media at its disposal and his Facebook page becoming the most popular in the world, with obvious political ramifications.
There is no greater resource for the sharing of ideas and interacting with others online than social media, and consequently there are more than half a billion Facebook users worldwide and over 50 million tweets are made per day. Other sites like, YouTube, Flickr, Bebo, LinkedIn and MySpace also have huge popularity. The social media age is certainly a positive development to society, but when people don’t use it cautiously, it can be a platform for unprofessionalism and embarrassment.
As the GMC put it, ‘social media can blur the boundary between an individual’s public and professional lives’ which means that if you are not cautious, your private life can become public. While everyone is at risk of damaging their reputation by being reckless online, the potential danger of social media blunders is even greater amongst those who rely on the trust of their communities, such as politicians, police officers, teachers and particularly doctors.
In 2009 a group of seven doctors and nurses were suspended for participating in the craze by ‘planking’ in their hospital in Swindon, when on duty during their night shift, in various locations including the helipad, the ward floor and on trollies, and posting their pictures on Facebook. As the staff soon found out, the online world is a dangerous place where the uploading of a photograph or post is often permanent and traceable. It’s clear that evidence of unprofessionalism online can be very hard to shake off. When anyone with the expertise to Google your name can see a window into your life, doctors must be very cautious with what is visible.
Stories like these make headlines and whilst other fellow healthcare professionals observing can laugh and consider themselves safe from social media related unprofessionalism, it is easy to make a mistake online. In a world where our private lives are increasingly publicised and visible online, the information we consider to be personal is in danger of being accessed by patients, with potentially damaging consequences. The GMC claim that doctors can be held accountable for making ‘intemperate, disparaging or inappropriate remarks’ about patients online even if they are kept anonymous. While the GMC claims not to monitor Facebook, the information uploaded can easily spread and be brought to their attention.
The online situation for doctors is by no means dire. As yet, there have been no ‘fitness to practice’ issues regarding doctors’ behaviour on social media, regardless of how inappropriate these blunders may have been. However, in the past year a junior doctor has been suspended for making ‘scatological’ remarks about the Director for Health and Work at the DoH, on the website Doctors.net.uk.
The GMC may be unlikely to lock up your medical licence and throw away the key, but acting unprofessionally online doesn’t do doctors and medical students any favours. It is certainly not uncommon for employers in any profession to do some online browsing when you apply for a job, and patients can so easily do the same, so it is in everyone’s best interests to make a good first online impression.
The position of the GMC and BMA regarding doctors’ and medical students’ use of social media has been clear. They acknowledge that most people will use sites like Twitter and Facebook regardless of what they advise but they have made some guidelines on how to navigate social media as a doctor or medical student safely.
Actions to be safe from social networking unprofessionalism are simple and certainly don’t require online abstinence. By being cautious with privacy settings on social media pages and conservatively filtering who can and can’t see aspects of your profiles, you can make your private life more secure, visible only to your close friends. However, despite this, a comment, status or tweet should be considered the same as shouting through a megaphone: if you don’t want the repercussions for something you say online, don’t say it.
You should be sure to be conscious of your online image which is visible to anyone. By appearing unprofessional like having drunken antics from rugby tour, or controversial, with an extreme political affiliation or display of intolerance, you are damaging your professional standing to employers and more importantly to patients. The key test is to search for yourself online and see how much information about yourself you can find. Then ask yourself whether what you find is how you would like to be represented professionally. It would be a good idea to keep an eye out and monitor how your online profiles look, particularly with regard to pictures and posts.
With the internet and social media set to stay, those in healthcare are responsible to ensure that the online resources are taken advantage of, improving medicine for doctors and medical students as well as patients.
With the huge success of the social media website for professionals, LinkedIn, there is an increasing number of social media sites designed specifically for doctors. These provide doctors with the opportunity to discuss medical issues, network and maintain professional relationships online.
Blogging amongst doctors has also gained popularity in recent years, particularly through sites like KevinMD. com and with books collating blogs like ‘In Stitches’ by Dr Nick Edwards. As long as doctors conform to their ‘ethical and legal duty to protect [patient] privacy’ in their posts, blogging acts as great way to creatively publish your experiences, opinions and ideas. The key balance to be made is to maximise the effective use of online resources without medicine becoming robotic and detached from the patient. The web needs to be there to supplement the medical support of their doctors, neither to hider it nor replace it.
When people use the internet for such a vast range of services like news, maps, weather, shopping and communication, amongst others, it seems logical that healthcare be supported online. The days are gone where people go to their doctor with no understanding of what’s wrong with them. It is now common practice to Google the problem and self-diagnose, but the internet’s support needn’t end there. Interactive forums allow access of information and the sharing of experience to people suffering from poor health, in a way that may even be superior to the support a doctor can give.
The net is teeming with websites offering medical information, which the public often uses to get an overview of a medical condition and (worryingly) medical students use as a learning resource. Websites like ‘Hello Health’, founded in the US in 2007, allow patients to have greater online communication with their doctors, providing features like video chat, instant messaging and the uploading of real time symptoms, all of which improve the patient’s experience.
With the explosion of social media looking set to continue, doctors and medical students need to act responsibly online to protect themselves, their patients and the public image of the health service. Don’t be worried about the ‘Thought Police’ round every corner, just err on the side of caution and where possible be conservative with the nature of what you put or allow to be put online.
The Medical Student’s Top 5 Medical Social Media Sites
1) Doctors.net.uk
The UK’s largest online forum for doctors.
2) doc2doc
The BMJ’s online network for doctors for blogging, forums and discussion.
3) Medpedia
A peer-reviewed version of Wikipedia where only those with a medical degree or PhD can edit pages.
4) Ozmosis
A service with the sharing of medical knowledge at its core – discuss clinical cases and medical publications with other doctors.
5) The Student Doctor Network
Educational forums for medical students and junior doctors.
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