Virtual colleagues, virtually colleagues--physicians' use of Twitter: a population-based observational study

Area of Science:

• Medical Ethics
• Digital Health
• Professional Conduct

Background:

• Social networking sites are increasingly used by healthcare professionals.
• Concerns exist regarding the potential for breaches of patient confidentiality and medical ethics online.
• Physicians and medical students' online activities require scrutiny to ensure professional standards.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate potential violations of patient confidentiality.
• To identify other breaches of medical ethics by physicians and medical students on Twitter.
• To assess the nature and prevalence of unprofessional behavior on social media.

Main Methods:

• Population-based cross-sectional observational study.
• Analysis of tweets from Swedish-speaking physicians and medical students on Twitter (July 2007-March 2012).
• Content analysis of 13,780 tweets to identify unprofessional behavior and ethical breaches.

Main Results:

• 1.9% of tweets were labeled unprofessional; 0.2% by 6.3% of users contained potential patient privacy violations.
• Specific patient information, though not names or IDs, was disclosed in some tweets.
• Unprofessional content was more prevalent among pseudonymous users and medical students.

Conclusions:

• Potential patient privacy violations and ethical breaches were observed among physicians and medical students on Twitter.
• Healthcare professionals must be mindful of their social media presence.
• Further investigation is needed on the impact of social networking site guidelines for medical professionals.