Doctors and social media: knowledge gaps and unsafe practices
Open accessAbstract
INTRODUCTION Easy access and availability of communication tools have facilitated doctors’ communication, adding new challenges. Through this study, we aimed to determine the profile of the knowledge and practices of doctors in our institution, and to identify knowledge gaps in the use of social media accounts. METHODS An anonymous survey was sent by electronic mail in March–May 2018 to 931 doctors working in National University Hospital, Singapore. It included questions on demographics; use of social media; and case-based scenarios involving professionalism, patient-doctor relationship and personal practices of social media use. RESULTS The response rate was 12.8%. The majority of the respondents owned a social media account (93.3%), had not received education on social media use in medical school (84.0%), did not own a separate work phone (80.7%) and claimed to have no medical education on this as a doctor (58.8%). Unawareness of the institution’s social media policy was reported by 14.3% of the respondents. Questions on knowledge of the privacy settings of their account were incorrectly answered. Only 75.6%–82.4% of the participants responded ‘no’ when asked if they would post pictures of patients or their results, even if there were no patient identifiers. CONCLUSION There is inadequate knowledge regarding institutional social media policy and privacy settings of social media accounts among doctors. Regarding practices in social media use, while most agree that caution should be exercised for online posts involving patients, ambiguity still exists. The emerging knowledge deficit and potentially unsafe practices that are identified can be addressed through continuing medical education and training on social media use.
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In a study among doctors in Singapore, 30% to 55% of respondents had an incorrect understanding of their social media account settings despite 95.5% claiming that they were aware that the institution had a social media policy.
“From 30% to 55% of the respondents had an incorrect understanding of their SM account settings despite 95.5% claiming that they were aware that the institution had a SM policy [100].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [100]
The Discussion reports that 30.0%–55.0% of respondents misunderstood their social media account settings. But the Results say 85.7% were aware of the institution’s social media policy; the cited 95.5% refers instead to respondents who claimed to understand their account settings. (LLM, conf=0.93)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredA linear relationship between increasing age and decreasing social media use was found among physicians of the same specialty or other health care professionals.
“A linear relationship between increasing age and decreasing SM use was also found among physicians of the same specialty or other HCPs [85,91,94,95,100,106].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [100]
The Results and Discussion (page unavailable) report that doctors aged 45 or older made up most respondents without a social media account, supporting an age-related difference among the surveyed doctors. The paper does not establish a linear decline with increasing age or report that finding for other healthcare professionals. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredExceptions were 95.4% of family medicine residents and physicians in Saudi Arabia reported having a social media account and checking them at least once a day, 93.4% of medical doctors in a Singapore hospital, and 100% of Chinese registered nurses owned a social media account.
“The exceptions were 3 studies: family medicine residents and physicians in Saudi Arabia where 95.4% of participants reported having an SM account and checking them at least once a day [79], 93.4% of medical doctors in a Singapore hospital [100], and 100% of Chinese registered nurses owned an SM account [107].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [100]
The Results report that 111 of 119 respondents (93.3%) owned a social media account, and the Discussion identifies the setting as a tertiary hospital in Singapore. This supports the Singapore-doctor finding attributed to [100], but not the cited figure of 93.4%. The Saudi and Chinese studies have separate citations and are not attributed to this source. (LLM, conf=0.88)
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 [100]
The Results (page not available) report that 85.7% of surveyed doctors knew their institution had a social media policy, supporting the claim that some were unaware of its existence. The Discussion describes ambivalence about social media practices, but does not establish reluctance to follow an existing policy. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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 [100]
Studies showed privacy settings deployment from 71% to 97% among health care professionals.
“Studies showed privacy settings deployment from 71% to 97% among HCPs [40,42,65,66,68,96,100,115,117,118].”
From Dangers and Benefits of Social Media on E-Professionalism of Health Care Professionals: Scoping Review (2021) · cites this paper as [100]
The Results (Table III; page not available) report that 95.5% of surveyed doctors said they knew their account’s privacy setting, not that they had deployed privacy settings. A search for privacy-setting use and the 71%–97% range found no passage reporting deployment rates. (LLM, conf=0.75)
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Cites
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“This practice is consistent with that reported in other studies.(5,10) Although guidelines on social media use can be found in the SMC ECEG, our study found that there is much heterogeneity in social media-related knowledge among the doctors surveyed.”
BackgroundResultInfluentialMedical professionalism in the age of online social networking
Guseh, J. S., Brendel, R. W., & Brendel, D. H. (2009) · Journal of Medical Ethics · doi:10.1136/jme.2009.029231 · Cited by 165 · see citing works
Assessment of medical students’ attitudes on social media use in medicine: a cross-sectional study
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Itʼs Your Own Risk: Medical Studentsʼ Perspectives on Online Professionalism
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How much of a social media profile can doctors have?
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Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Kaplan AM, Haenlein M. Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media. Bus Horizons 2010; 53:59-68.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Vukušić Rukavina, T., Viskić, J., Machala Poplašen, L., Relić, D., Marelić, M., Jokic, D., & Sedak, K. (2021) · Journal of Medical Internet Research · doi:10.2196/25770 · Cited by 199 · see citing works
“Numerous studies document blurred boundaries between patient and HCPs, and between students and faculty [40, 43, 47, 59, 64, 65, 68, 70, 73, 75, 78, 82, 85, 98, 100, 105, 107, 114, 117].”
Influential
- Authors
- Low, J., Tan, M., & Joseph, R.
- Affiliations
- National University of Singapore (SG)
- Venue
- Singapore Medical Journal
- Publisher
- Medknow
- Published
- 2021-11-30
- Volume
- 62
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 604-609
- ISSN
- 0037-5675 (ISSN-L)
- 2737-5935
- PMC
- PMC8804418
- OpenAlex
- W3016605829
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 1.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-sa
- Locations
- Singapore Medical Journal (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- National University of Singapore (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Impact of Technology on Adolescents
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Digital Imaging in Medicine
- Keywords
- physician professionalism, patient privacy, privacy settings, physician-patient relationship, knowledge gaps, continuing medical education
- MeSH terms
- Professionalism, Humans, Physician-Patient Relations, Physicians, Knowledge, Social Media
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