Perceptions of e-professionalism among dental students: a UK dental school study
Open accessAbstract
Introduction The social media activity of some healthcare students has created doubt about their ability to uphold and defend the ethical principles of healthcare in their online behaviours. A lot of research has been conducted on the online behaviours of medical and allied health professional students, however, less has been undertaken on dental students.Aims The aim was to determine whether students were aware of the guidelines set by the General Dental Council (GDC) regarding social media and whether they believed they were being professional in their online activities.Methods and materials Eighty-eight dental students (46 from year 2; 42 from year 4) at one UK dental school completed a questionnaire study examining their attitude towards and perceptions of e-professionalism.Results The results show that most students were heavy users of social media with an awareness of social media guidelines set out by the GDC. However, student responses to various e-professionalism scenarios reveals disagreement on whether posts referring to alcohol and work colleagues were deemed unprofessional.Conclusion Student perceptions of and attitudes towards e-professionalism is complicated and contradictory. More research will need to be undertaken to explore how we can inculcate e-professional values and behaviours in dental professionalism teaching.
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Unprofessional behavior on social media of health care professionals can have legal consequences, potentially affecting credibility and licensure.
“Unprofessional behavior on SM of HCPs can have legal consequences, potentially affecting credibility and licensure.”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [61]
The Conclusions (page unavailable) link unprofessional social-media content to concerns about public trust and warn that dental students could face General Dental Council fitness-to-practise cases. This supports potential reputational and regulatory consequences, but the paper does not state that such behaviour has legal consequences or affects licensure, and its warning concerns dental students rather than healthcare professionals generally. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEven if institutions have social media policies or guidelines, health care professionals acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing social media policies or ignorance of their existence.
“Contrary to that finding, even if institutions have SM policies or guidelines, HCPs acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing SM policies [78,85,114] or ignorance to their existence [61,64,65,100].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [61]
The Discussion (page unavailable) reports that only 54.4% of year 2 and 26.2% of year 4 dental students claimed awareness of GDC social media guidelines, supporting the point about ignorance of existing guidance. The Conclusions (page unavailable) describe a gap between knowledge of the guidelines and attitudes or behaviour, but do not establish that healthcare professionals generally acknowledged reluctance to follow institutional policies; the study surveyed dental students at one UK school. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredEven if institutions have social media policies or guidelines, health care professionals acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing social media policies or ignorance to their existence.
“Our results show that even though a lack of SM policies was recognized as a barrier, even if institutions have SM policies or guidelines, HCPs acknowledged reluctant behavior regarding existing SM policies [78,85,114] or ignorance to their existence [61,64,65,100].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [61]
The Discussion (page unavailable) reports that only 54.4% of second-year and 26.2% of fourth-year dental students said they were aware of the existing GDC social media guidelines, supporting the lack-of-awareness part. The study concerns students at one UK dental school, not healthcare professionals generally, and it does not report that respondents acknowledged reluctance to follow the guidelines. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredStudies found high social media use among students, ranging from 66.9% to 98.7%.
“Studies that assessed SM use among different types of HCPs found high use among students, from 66.9% to 98.7% [40,43,50,51,60,61,64-66,68-70,102]”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [61]
There are no validated instruments for assessing attitude towards e-professionalism of medical and dental students.
“Many studies have investigated aspects of e-professionalism of medical or dental students as future health professionals, but there are no validated instruments made for assessing attitude towards e-professionalism of those two populations.”
From Development and validation of scale for measuring attitudes towards e-professionalism among medical and dental students: SMePROF-S scale (2021) · cites this paper as [19]
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Dobson, E., Patel, P., & Neville, P.
- Affiliations
- Croydon Health Services NHS Trust (GB)
- University of Bristol (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Neville, P.
- ORCID
- Neville, P.
- Venue
- British Dental Journal
- Published
- 2019-01
- Volume
- 226
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 73-78
- ISSN
- 0007-0610 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-5373
- OpenAlex
- W2909482404
- Cited by
- 40
- References
- 38
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 3
- FWCI
- 4.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- Licence
- other-oa
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- BDJ (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Explore Bristol Research (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- Bristol Research (University of Bristol) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Innovations in Medical Education
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Dental Education, Practice, Research
- Keywords
- e-professionalism, dental students, social media use, professional conduct, online behavior, professional ethics, teacher professionalism
- MeSH terms
- Professionalism, Education, Dental, United Kingdom, Humans, Schools, Dental, Students, Dental
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