Making “Social” Safer: Are Facebook and Other Online Networks Becoming Less Hazardous for Health Professionals?

Daniel R. George

The Journal of Clinical Ethics 23, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 348-52.

 

Major concerns about privacy have limited health professionals’ usage of popular social networking sites such as Facebook. However, the landscape of social media is changing in favor of more sophisticated privacy controls that enable users to more carefully manage public and private information. This evolution in technology makes it potentially less hazardous for health professionals to consider accepting colleagues and patients into their online networks, and invites medicine to think constructively about how social media may add value to contemporary healthcare.