E-Professionalism among Dental Students from Malaysia and Finland

Abstract

The increased use of social media in dentistry is associated with both advantages and disadvantages. A new form of professionalism, “e-professionalism,” has emerged. It includes an online persona and online information in any format that displays cues to professional identity, attitudes, and behaviors. The objective was to explore the perceptions of Malaysian and Finnish dental students on e-professionalism. A survey of 613 Malaysian and Finnish students was performed. The main variables assessed were posting of objectionable or inappropriate content among students, attitudes towards unprofessional online content, perceived online presence, contacts with patients and faculty members on social media, and concerns about social media use. The prevalence of posting clearly unprofessional content was not high among dental students. Revealing information of patients was most common content of clear unprofessionalism. Students from Malaysia contacted patients and faculty members more actively in social media than students in Finland (73.6% of students in Malaysia and 11.8% in Finland had invited faculty members to be “friends”). Malaysian students were more concerned and more likely to react to inappropriate content on social media. Attitude of dental students towards social media use in dentistry were very positive in both countries. Students agreed that guiding patients online is a new responsibility for dentists in the digital age (86.4% of students in Malaysia and 73.4% in Finland). The findings indicate the existence of both benefits and dangers of social media on e-professionalism among students. There is a need to include robust digital professionalism awareness training for students.

Differences between doctors of medicine and dental medicine in the perception of professionalism on social networking sites: the development of the e-professionalism assessment compatibility index (ePACI)

“…Possible explanations for this are that younger HCPs are more versed in how to navigate SNSs and are more accustomed to SNSs being a part of their identity [ 2 ]. This can lead them to be more error-prone and more likely to post unprofessional content [ 12 , 14 , 59 ] . This was also seen in the definitive results of the mixed methods study conducted by Vukušić Rukavina et al, which found more unprofessional content on the Facebook profiles of students (5.8%) than faculty (0%) [ 40 ].…”

“…Recognizing one's need for further education is a step in the right direction, and 74.1% of our respondents stated that they would benefit from additional guidelines on e-professionalism. Exposure to problems of e-professionalism by opening debate and dialogue with HCPs at all levels to raise attention and awareness, especially on conflicting or blurred issues, could perhaps alert an even larger percentage of HCPs to the need for guidelines on e-professionalism [ 15 , 32 , 59 ]. The best example of a successful debate is the #medbikini movement, which sparked awareness, opened a debate, and led to the re-examining and directing of e-professionalism towards a new, better understanding of professionalism on SNSs [ 40 ].…”

Differences of professionalism perception on social networking sites between doctors of medicine and dental medicine: Development of e-professionalism assessment compatibility index (ePACI)

“…While reviewing literature, although there are available scales and indexes in some form or another for the student population [40,52], we did not encounter a way to easily measure and scale perceptions of eprofessionalism of graduated MDs and DMDs.…”

Exploring changes in the perception of e-professionalism among medical and dental students: a quantitative cross-sectional study

“…Marelić et al introduced the systematically designed SMePROF-S scale to assess medical and dental students’ attitudes toward e-professionalism ( 13 ). Their significant contribution aligns with an expanding international and national discourse, particularly in Croatia, where scholarly inquiries into the perceptions and engagement of medical and dental students with e-professionalism are becoming more prevalent ( 11 , 13 - 15 ).…”