The Ethical Use of Social Media in Healthcare
There’s no denying it — social media has been woven into the fabric of human life. Along with being a glorious tool for personal expression and information exchange, social media has been adopted as a means of achieving the business goals of a wide range of industries.
Healthcare is no exception. Health professionals have embraced social media as a tool to communicate with patients, track patient health status, conduct research, and monitor infectious disease outbreaks (Denecke, et al., 2015).
Likewise, patients are using social media to be more self-sufficient and proactive healthcare consumers. For instance, patients are increasingly engaging in social media-based peer-to-peer healthcare for support related to their chronic conditions, like diabetes. They are also exploring crowdhealth options, like Crowdmed, to solicit health information from others regarding treatments or diagnoses (Denecke, et al., 2015).
This convergence of health with the world wide web has raised several concerns regarding ethics, a familiar topic in the history of healthcare. Abiding by a code of ethics in the medical fields date as far back as 500 BC with the Hippocratic Oath, still taken in some form, by many health professionals today. Since, the oath has evolved into a field known as bioethics which has helped to inform the ethical standards of modern-day health professions like the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Code of Medical Ethics and the American Nursing Association’s Nursing Code of Ethics.
Specific concerns raised by scholars and healthcare providers who are navigating social media as a professional tool are related to confidentiality, privacy, consent, conduct, representativeness, and misinformation (Azer, 2017; Denecke, et al., 2015; Parsi & Elster, 2015). Guidelines about online medical professionalism from organizations like the AMA, the American College of Physicians (ACP) and the Federation of State Medical Boards do exist (Kind, 2015). However, being that social media is a new-comer in the healthcare arena and is constantly evolving, uncertainty still exists about the appropriate utilization of social media for certain health applications.
Using the available literature as a reference, I propose these four guidelines for the ethical use of social media by healthcare professionals (HCPs).
- Know your audience
This rule applies to anyone intending to disseminate information on social media, but especially for HCPs. Understanding the target audience’s preferences, views, demographics, and psychographics is essential for ensuring that social media behaviors are embraced and acceptable. For instance, there are tendencies to target youth, aka digital natives, since they are so accustomed to social media. However, this population is also in a vulnerable stage of life, so HCPs should be sensitive to this when they target them with health messaging on social media (Denecke, et al., 2015).
2. Never compromise on privacy
Privacy of patient-provider interactions is emphasized as an ethical obligation in nearly every healthcare profession as well as a legal requirement for U.S. practitioners under the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). HCPs should therefore abide by this legal stipulation whenever using social media to interact with patients or share information about patients. Sharing video of patients is more common on social media platforms, especially to showcase cosmetic procedures. Still, patient consent should be acquired prior to posting such images and patients should know their rights in terms of privacy and confidentiality.
3. Think before you post
A 2009 study revealed that 60% of medical schools surveyed experienced “incidents of students posting unprofessional online content” (Chretien et al., 2009). And the line that separates personal and professional behaviors of HCPs is starting to blur, as evidenced by the firing of one young off-duty doctor captured on video berating an Uber driver. To address situations like this, the AMA advises physicians to utilize privacy settings, closely monitor their accounts for appropriateness and accuracy, and separate professional and private accounts where possible. Furthermore, being cognizant that behaviors in one’s personal life can be easily captured and shared with the masses should encourage HCPs to behave acceptably in public.
4. Speak the truth
It is understandable and commendable that HCPs would want to combat the misinformation swirling all over the web about various health topics like vaccination and nutrition. They should be encouraged to use their education and expertise to do so. One way to ensure that their communications are viewed as trusted and reliable is to include their credentials. People are more likely to take a medical doctors advice than someone without formal medical training. Also, HCPs should feel obligated to share information that is true, evidenced-based, and backed by science. Taking a stance for monetary gain, for instance, is unethical and erodes that trust between the public and the medical community.
Social media can be a versatile tool for many industries. It can be tricky when used to for the purposes of healthcare, but if the aforementioned ethical guidelines and those that have long shaped the medical field are adhered to, then HCPs should have no problem taking full advantage of social media for their professional needs and the needs of their patients.
References
Azer, S. A. (2017). Social Media Channels in Health Care Research and Rising Ethical Issues. AMA Journal of Ethics, 19(11), 1061–1069. doi:10.1001/journalofethics.2017.19.11.peer1-1711
Chretien, K.C., Greysen, S.R., Chretien, J.P., Kind T. (2009). Online posting of unprofessional content by medical students. JAMA, 302(12):1309. doi: 10.1001/jama.2009.1387
Denecke, K., Bamidis, P., Bond, C., Gabarron, E., Househ, M., Lau, A. Y. S., Mayer, M. A., Merolli, M., & Hansen, M. (2015). Ethical Issues of Social Media Usage in Healthcare. IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics, 24(1), 137–147. doi: 10.15265/IY-2015–001
Kind, T. (2015). Professional Guidelines for Social Media Use: A Starting Point. AMA J Ethics, 17(5):441–447. doi: 10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.nlit1–1505
Parsi, K., & Elster, N. (2015). Why Can’t We Be Friends? A Case-Based Analysis of Ethical Issues with Social Media in Health Care. AMA Journal of Ethics, 17(11), 1009–1018. doi:10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.11.peer1-1511
