Social Media

Question 1

Privacy - what to do about it?

Why (4)?

Answer 1

You should regularly review the privacy settings for each of your social media profiles

a) Social media sites cannot guarantee confidentiality whatever privacy settings are in place
b) Patients, your employer and potential employers, or any other organisation that you have a relationship with, may be able to access your personal information
c) Information about your location may be embedded within photographs and other content
d) Once published it can be difficult to remove as others may distribute it further

Question 2

What if a patient contacts you about their care or other professional matters through your private profile?

Answer 2

You should indicate that you cannot mix social and professional relationships and, where appropriate, direct them to your professional profile

Question 3

What is the golden rule?

Answer 3

Maintain patient confidentiality at all times

Although individual pieces of information may not breach confidentiality on their own, the sum of published information online could be enough to identify a patient or someone close to them

You must not use publicly accessible social media to discuss individual patients or their care with those patients or anyone else

Question 4

Are you allowed to be anonymous as “Dr”?

Answer 4

No - if you identify yourself as a doctor in publicly accessible social media, you should also identify yourself by name

Any material written by authors who represent themselves as doctors is likely to be taken on trust and may reasonably be taken to represent the views of the profession more widely

You should also be aware that content uploaded anonymously can, in many cases, be traced back to its point of origin