The responsible use of online social networking: who should mentor medical students

As medical students become more active in online social networking (OSN), there are increasing concerns regarding violations of patient privacy and a lack of professionalism.

Students need to be mentored, but who is best suited to the task? We hypothesized that residents are closer to students in usage and attitudes toward online communication than are faculty. If so, they would be more credible as mentors.

We surveyed faculty (N = 16), 1st-year residents (N = 120), and 3rd-year medical students (N = 130) to compare attitudes about OSN and the online usage patterns.

We found residents to be more like students in usage patterns of personal electronic media and in their choice of the mentoring techniques that should be used.

Residents say they were not prepared to mentor students without additional guidance but were more confident than faculty members that they had the knowledge to do so.