Physician Social Media Abuse

What Would You Do?

Abstract

Over the past decade, physician social media use has been made popular and evolved from simple Facebook pages to rapid, instant media sharing. New social media applications, such as Snapchat and Instagram, are finding welcome homes in personal cell phones of physicians. The purpose of this article is to determine patients' views of not only physician use of these apps but also how they would react if their physician abused this technology. As outlined in the article below, physician abuse of social media is growing—and not strictly confined to one demographic group of physicians. The results of this study show patient concern over physician use of social media and the potential for patient to take legal action against physicians over social media abuse. Future policy directions should aim to increase transparency of physician social media use with the goal of eliminating social media abuse.