http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1728725

Social Media and Physicians’ Online Identity Crisis

Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD¹; Thomas W. Koenig, MD²; Margaret S. Chisolm, MD²

JAMA. 2013;310(6):581-582. doi:10.1001/jama.2013.8238

"Physicians are increasingly counted among Facebook’s 1 billion users and Twitter’s 500 million members. Beyond these social media platforms, other innovative social media tools are being used in medical practice, including for online consultation,¹ in the conduct of clinical research,² and in medical school curricula.³ Social media content is brief, characterized as “many-to-many” communication, and able to spread rapidly across the Internet beyond a person’s control. These and other features of social media create new dimensions to traditional ethical issues, particularly around maintaining appropriate boundaries between physicians and patients."