The Glass Houses of Attending Surgeons: An Assessment of Unprofessional Behavior on Facebook Among Practicing Surgeons

Older and wiser? Changes in unprofessional content on urologists’ social media after transition from residency to practice

“…These studies used similar, although less extensive, definitions of unprofessional content based on professionalism standards of the American Medical Association and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education; for instance, offensive comments about specific patients or colleagues were not included in their rubric. The present study followed a cohort of urology residency graduates over their first year in practice and found that these urologists had very similar rates of unprofessional content between residency and practice, consistent with previous observations that surgeons in practice for <5 years may have higher rates of unprofessional online behaviour [9]. We expected that as residents started their careers, their Facebook accounts would reflect increasing self-identification as practising urologists, which held true as the proportion of self-identification increased from 42% to 55%.…”

Medical student use of Facebook to support preparation for anatomy assessments

“…This increase in adverse incident reporting has led to the development of policies to deal with this increase (Chretien et al, 2009;White et al, 2013), although this does not necessarily correlate to changes in behavior with some institutions still having to deal with unprofessional postings (Barlow et al, 2015). However, the issue is further complicated with students, doctors and patients all having different thresholds of what is acceptable to post online (Jain et al, 2014;Langenfeld et al, 2014;Langenfeld et al, 2015), and students appearing to be unaware of their professional vulnerability (Osman et al, 2012). Furthermore, as part of their training healthcare students are exposed to a range of sensitive material that needs to be treated appropriately to prevent breaches of confidentiality.…”

Proper use of social media by health operators in the pediatric oncohematological setting: Consensus statement from the Italian Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Association (AIEOP)

“…First‐hand experience has shown that patients are often very keen on this type of relationship, and refusing an invitation to be their “friends” can prove difficult. But agreeing to be a patient's “friend” on Facebook clearly means that health professionals may be opening a window on their own private lives, accessible not only to their patients, but also to all of their other “friends.” This changes the nature of the relationship, with effects that are sometimes positive, but can sometimes difficult to manage. It can generate a misleading sense of confidentiality and may give rise to confusion about the patient's and the health operator's respective roles.…”