Paper: Social Media and Health Care Professionals: Benefits, Risks, and Best Practices

Title  : Social Media and Health Care Professionals: Benefits, Risks, and Best Practices

Reference:

Ventola, C. L. (2014). Social media and health care professionals: benefits, risks, and best practices. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 39(7), 491.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4103576/



INTRODUCTION

Many social media tools are available for health care professionals (HCPs), including social networking platforms, blogs, microblogs, wikis, media-sharing sites, and virtual reality and gaming environments.–These tools can be used to improve or enhance professional networking and education, organizational promotion, patient care, patient education, and public health programs.,– However, they also present potential risks to patients and HCPs regarding the distribution of poor-quality information, damage to professional image, breaches of patient privacy, violation of personal–professional boundaries, and licensing or legal issues.–,,– Many health care institutions and professional organizations have issued guidelines to prevent these risks.,,,,,


THE DANGERS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Poor Quality of Information

Breaches of Patient Privacy

Violation of the Patient–HCP Boundary

Licensing Issues

Damage to Professional Image

A major risk associated with the use of social media is the posting of unprofessional content that can reflect unfavorably on HCPs, students, and affiliated institutions. Social media convey information about a person’s personality, values, and priorities, and the first impression generated by this content can be lasting. Perceptions may be based on any of the information featured in a social media profile, such as photos, nicknames, posts, and comments liked or shared, as well as the friends, causes, organizations, games, and media that a person follows.
Behavior that could be construed as unprofessional includes violations of patient privacy; the use of profanity or discriminatory language; images of sexual suggestiveness or intoxication; and negative comments about patients, an employer, or a school. Such public missteps by HCPs have been documented, including physicians taking digital photographs during surgery, posing with weapons or alcohol, and posting “tweets” that are harmful to an individual or the profession. The airing of frustrations, or “venting,” regarding patients also occurs in online forums and is not recommended.
Information gathered from social media can also be used to make decisions regarding admission to medical or professional programs, selection for residencies, or employment. Employers and residency programs now search Facebook and other social networking sites before hiring applicants. A Microsoft survey found that 79% of employers view online information regarding prospective employees, and only 7% of job candidates were aware of this possibility., By making public posts, a person has willingly made information available for anyone to view for any purpose. For some, it logically follows that candidates who don’t use discretion in deciding what content to post online may also be incapable of exercising sound professional judgment.
It is not unusual for social media users to be connected to overlapping networks of friends, family, and colleagues. Some users try to keep their personal and professional images separate by creating different accounts.,, This may be difficult to implement in practice because personal and professional contacts often overlap. However, most social networking sites now provide privacy settings that allow individuals to customize both their profile content and who can view it.,Ideally, account and privacy settings should be set in a way that enables one’s network to expand while limiting the exposure of information to people outside of the network. Any settings made available by the social media site that allow users to label different relationships so that only appropriate information is shared with certain groups or individuals should also be used. HCPs should conduct periodic searches for their own names or other identifying information to ensure that their social media presence projects a professional image.

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