Constraints on hospitalists and surgeons and restricted orthopedic admission criteria can exacerbate patients’ distress that comes from clinicians’ disagreements.
AMA J Ethics. 2023; 25(12):E873-877. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2023.873.
Health care professionals’ use of social media can pose ethical challenges related to the boundary between professional and personal identities, privacy, confidentiality, and the trustworthiness of health care professionals.
AMA J Ethics. 2015; 17(11):1009-1018. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.11.peer1-1511.
The American College of Physicians and the Federation of State Medical Boards’ guidelines for online medical professionalism apply existing norms of communication and confidentiality to new settings but will need to be modified in light of technological advances and unanswered questions.
AMA J Ethics. 2015; 17(5):441-447. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.nlit1-1505.
The American Medical Association Code of Medical Ethics’ opinions on professionalism and the use of social media, sexual misconduct in the practice of medicine, sexual or romantic relations between physicians and key third parties, and physicians’ duty to care for the poor.
AMA J Ethics. 2015; 17(5):432-434. doi:
10.1001/journalofethics.2015.17.5.coet1-1505.
Daphne C. Ferrer, MD and Peter M. Yellowlees, MBBS, MD
Telepsychiatry extends access to psychiatric treatment to those who might not otherwise get it, but licensure problems and the risk of boundary violations between patients and physicians need to be worked out.
A requirement to uphold the confidentiality of information shared in the physician-patient relationship is a central tenet of medical professionalism that, while at risk and undermined in various ways in modern medicine, has been consistently endorsed from the time of Hippocrates.
For a medical school admissions committee to consider social networking activities during the selection process without informing candidates would violate the principles of transparency and consistency and could lead to worthy applications being rejected.