Visser Benjamin J, Huiskes Florian, Korevaar Daniel A
Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Meibergdreef 1105 AZ, Amsterdam THE NETHERLANDS e-mail:
Indian J Med Ethics. 2012 Oct-Dec;9(4):245-8. doi: 10.20529/IJME.2012.083.
Increasing numbers of medical practitioners and medical students are using online social and business-related networking websites such as Facebook, Doc2doc and LinkedIn. These rapidly evolving and growing social media have potential to promote public health by providing powerful instruments for communication and education. However, evidence is emerging from studies, legal cases, and media reports that the use of these new technologies is creating several ethical problems for medical practitioners as well as medical students. Improper online activities may harm not only individual reputations and careers, but also the medical profession as a whole, for example by breach of patient confidentiality, defamation of colleagues and employers, undisclosed conflict of interests that bias the medical practitioner's medical advice, posting of advice/information without an evidence base, and infringement of copyright. We developed a self-evaluation checklist for medical practitioners using social media. The checklist addresses three key elements in the use of social media: personal information and accessibility, connections, and postings. It contains questions specifically formulated to evaluate a medical practitioner's social media profile, to prevent unintended, improper online activities and to promote professional online behaviour.
越来越多的执业医师和医学生正在使用在线社交及与商业相关的社交网站，如脸书、Doc2doc和领英。这些迅速发展且不断壮大的社交媒体有潜力通过提供强大的沟通和教育工具来促进公众健康。然而，研究、法律案件及媒体报道中出现的证据表明，这些新技术的使用正在给执业医师和医学生带来若干伦理问题。不当的在线活动不仅可能损害个人声誉和职业发展，还可能损害整个医疗行业，例如违反患者保密规定、诋毁同事和雇主、未披露的利益冲突使执业医师的医疗建议产生偏差、发布缺乏证据基础的建议/信息以及侵犯版权。我们为使用社交媒体的执业医师制定了一份自我评估清单。该清单涉及社交媒体使用中的三个关键要素：个人信息与可访问性、人脉关系以及发布内容。它包含专门设计的问题，用于评估执业医师的社交媒体资料，防止意外的不当在线活动，并促进专业的在线行为。
