<p>"CHICAGO - From Facebook to YouTube to personal blogs, future doctors are crossing the line and getting in trouble.</p>
<p>A new study finds most medical school deans surveyed said they were aware of students posting unprofessional content online, including photos of drug paraphernalia and violations of patient privacy. Some infractions resulted in warnings, others in being expelled.</p>
<p>The survey cited a handful of examples. In one, a student posted identifying patient details on Facebook. Another requested an inappropriate friendship with a patient on the site. Others used profanity, according to the deans.
Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here</p>
<p>“The number we found was higher than we expected,” said Dr. Katherine Chretien of the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center, the study’s lead author. “And these are the incidents that made it to the attention of the deans. This is the tip of the iceberg.”"</p>
<p>Not sure if this is where this should be, but I was wondering people’s opinions?</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised - I kind of expect med students to be a little more behaved with these things I guess, seeing as how they’re spending so much money and worked hard to get to med school…</p>
<p>We need another season of ER, Facebook edition.</p>
<p>My kids don’t have Social Networking Site accounts (not like they have the time to maintain them) and I think that’s a good way to go (I don’t have an account either).</p>
<p>They are under a lot of pressure, and it’s easy to have some lapses of judgment. It’s not OK- but most of the med schools deal with it with a warning and wrist slap.</p>
<p>It sounds almost exactly like my dad’s med school fourth year shenanigans video from the late seventies, except it was in the pre-YouTube era. Guess it’s okay that previous generations of doctors behaved poorly, so long as there’s not a permanent and public record of social interactions.</p>
<p>(Get off my lawn, you meddling kids!)</p>
<p>Yes, this generation needs to be more responsible now that there’s a permanent record of our actions to be held accountable to, but the shock about the fact that this happens is a little naive. It’s always happened.</p>
<p>I don’t really care how profane they are or how much drug paraphrenalia they pose with. I do care that they are violating patient confidentiality and suggesting inappropriate relationships with patients. The revealing patient info is a serious crime that I hope will be prosecuted. This is not slap on the wrist hijinks; it is a crime with a victim. And the proposition is just swimming in yuck factor, hurts the patient, and reflects poor judgement that the med student will be in a position to exercise again the very next day if allowed to continue to interact with patients. This behavior harms the patients they are supposed to be helping. First do no harm…? Do you want people like this to have access to your medical records?</p>
<p>Attempting to “friend” a patient is very inappropriate and violating confidentiality is completely unacceptable (and, as pointed out, illegal). </p>
<p>But profanity… really? Does anyone actually think that profanity from a physician (or physician to be) in a social setting is somehow unprofessional?</p>
<p>Yep, this is the part I had a major problem with. One of my mom’s doctors (a sixty-something gentleman) tried to “friend” me once on LinkedIn, and I declined. I felt it was inappropriate.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the article I thought that what was found really wasn’t such a big deal at all. Later when the notion was mentioned of how some of this stuff might look when the student is a practicing surgeon at aged 50…That puts a different light on it.</p>
<p>To me, identifying patient details on facebook is a huge deal whether the doctor in question is the age of Doogie Howser or an octagenarian. The issue isn’t how it looks to violate your patient’s trust, or what people will think of you when you’re 50 and therefore no longer get a free pass for cute hijinks, it’s how violating the patient’s trust makes that patient forever less comfortable revealing important information to doctors. Broadcasting patient info also puts a big question mark in the minds of everyone else who sees the info online as to whether their own medical records will be kept private. If words gets out that the wild and crazy young docs of Chicago are putting patient info on the Net, what do you think the impact will be on people seeking treatment for venereal diseases or testing for HIV or…?</p>
<p>How so? Are you really going to be that shocked or dismayed to find out that your surgeon went to parties, drank, and used profanity as a 20-something college/med student?</p>
<p>You will always be held to a “higher” standard. A casual comment, your spelling, your math, your opinion. At a bar, in the grocery store, on a forum.</p>
<p>And confidential information? Just acknowledging that you’ve MET someone can be a breach. Please.</p>
<p>“Identifying patient details” can be something as inoccuous as “I met an old lady today who swore that [silly home remedy] relieved her [ailment].”</p>
<p>I saw that on one of my med student’s friend’s statuses the other day, and the first eight comments were “HIPAA!!!” from other med students. The ninth comment was her saying that it wasn’t a patient, it was someone in line at the grocery store who found out she was a med student.</p>
<p>I really think that, given the equivalent horror expressed at the use of profanity on a med student’s Facebook page, the “identifying patient details” were probably things like this. I also really think that med students are probably self-policing pretty well, given all the colleagues that jumped down my med student friend’s throat.</p>
<p>I feel like this is being made out to be a much bigger situation than it actually is. Medical students, and even 50-year-old surgeons, are not saints. I’d be far more worried about the fifty-something doctor I know of who’s been censured by the medical board for being high on marijuana all the time… He’s been censured, and they’ve <em>threatened</em> to suspend his license… but haven’t. Why am I not reading an article about things like <em>that</em>?</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear so many people don’t care (don’t effect your impressions of ?) how their Physicians appear in public, but I don’t know if I buy it. I care…</p>
<p>Exactly - also consider that the details might have been changed sufficiently to remove all PHI. Tons of doctors have medical blogs and write quite detailed accounts of certain interesting patients, but change a lot of details like dates/sex/age/etc so that there is no personally identifying information - perfectly ok per HIPAA. I think most medical students/doctors are very good about staying on the right side of HIPAA, and even if something seems like it might be a HIPAA violation, it probably isn’t.</p>
<p>I would hope that before this article was written, the author veified that it was actual patient confidential information that was posted and not either a fake patient or a real patient with enough information changed to make it HIPAA compliant.</p>
<p>I grew up around physicians, so maybe that has something to do with it. It might be kind of like the kid whose mom was a teacher at their school, seeing their math and language arts teachers get tipsy at the holiday parties and laughed a little too loudly at rude jokes towards the end of the evening, but still being able to respect them after Christmas break. I saw that doctors sometimes behaved poorly, but could still be good people and excellent doctors.</p>
<p>I’m hanging a spoon from my nose right now, because I finished off the last of a pint of ice cream and had a spoon left over to mess with. I was typing, and I was bored, and I hadn’t hung a spoon from my nose in a while. Wanted to see if I could still do it. It’s pretty juvenile. Doesn’t diminish my capacity as a structural engineer, though.</p>
<p>Silly. Profane. Mildly offensive. If they’re exceptionally good at what they do and they don’t let on that they’ve got some goofball tendencies in front of their clients (we’re not talking Max Mosley-type trespasses that would lend credence to an underlying current of prejudice or perversion, of course), why does that diminish their abilities as professionals? Do all professionals have an intrinsic obligation to behave professionally all the time?</p>
<p>"Do all professionals have an intrinsic obligation to behave professionally all the time? "</p>
<p>Not necessarily.</p>
<p>Like I said, glad to hear it, as I am far from perfect, but I do feel I have to look fairly presentable in public, and not do things that might make people question my discretion, judgment, and personal hygiene. I’m in a smallish community with maybe two degrees of separation.</p>
<p>OTOH, my son was…" a pistol", and created dramatic scenes in public, and I’m a Child Psychiatrist. I remember having to forcibly remove him from a church service, and hearing someone yell out " Hi Dr. Shrink!". IDK, mabye that kind of stuff adds credibility.</p>
<p>Teachers are in excellent example (my folks where teachers too), and I feel they too, unless with other teachers, have similar challenges.</p>
<p>This is one of those news stories about “trends” that I think you have to take with a grain of salt. There are few examples, and the ones that are there are worded very vaguely. We’re supposed to be upset because one medical student, somewhere, friended a patient on Facebook? Maybe it was a college classmate. Or maybe it was wildly inappropriate. But there is really no evidence in the article that this is a significant problem.</p>
<p>I am a CPA. Any divulgence of any private information would be grounds for dismissal and professional action. New hires are impressed with this on hire. We explain to newbies confidentiality is critical. And coach them how to deal with it, for example if someone asks you about a commonly known client, one might respond in a number of veins, such as “As you may have read in the WSJ”, “industry practice is generally blah blah blah, of coure there are a range of practices” making it clear that no one is divulging confidential info</p>