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.
This month, Virtual Mentor theme issue editor Kimberley Swartz, a medical student at the University of Florida College of Medicine, interviewed Dr. Gary Wang about the use of Truvada, approved in 2012 as a pre-exposure prophylaxis against HIV infection.
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.