Google+ has launched in beta stages and social networking for physicians has the potential for significant evolution. The challenge for physicians of balancing personal and professional online is not easy to solve. The dual citizenship approach provides recommendations for physicians to manage their profiles online. It is suggested that separate personal and professional profiles are created, with the hope that the latter will rank higher in searches. They also recommend undertaking “electronic self-audit” to identify potential online conflicts.
An ex-Google employee, Paul Adams, who now works at Facebook pointed to a bigger problem: “the social networks we’re creating online don’t match the social networks we already have offline.” The dual citizenship approach may exacerbate this as it oversimplifies a physician’s relationships, which are often multiple and more complex then simply personal versus professional. The approach may also appear fragmented and potential patients, colleagues and friends may be confused. Further, the duality of profiles that results from dual citizenship are beyond the control of the physician, with regard to search engine ranking.
Rather than implementing dual citizenship, we suggest an alternative approach where access to various areas of a profile would depend on offline relationships – i.e. relationship governed access. Therefore, a physician should grant access to a profile based on the appropriateness of offline relationships such as: friends, family, colleagues, students, teachers, business partners … and patients. A single profile with relationship governed access would make having multiple profiles unnecessary and outdated.
Google+ although not perfect, has brought physicians a step forward towards finding an appropriate way to translate offline into online relationships. It allows a physician to create a single public profile and control exactly what information is shown to the casual and search engines. This could include a photo, job, hospital location, specialty etc. but not necessarily all of these. It also enables “friends” (profile contacts) to be categorized “circles” which can represent different types of relationships. These “circles” can function as isolated units and the user can control how content is shared within these groups. We believe this unified profile approach will allow a single profile base that prevents casual and unwanted access to a physician’s full profile, whilst still allowing patients to view appropriate information or links.
Given the early stages of the site, it remains far too premature to facilitate a way in which patients could be added to “circles.” Current guidelines for physicians at a global level advise not to add patients to a social network. Despite this, the Google+ privacy settings have innovated the customization of a public profile.
In summary, Google+ provides a way to translate offline relationships into a single online profile. It also gives more control and is a step forward that renders the “dual citizenship” approach unnecessary by enabling relationship governed access.
Sebastian Mafeld and Parminder Ghura are physicians in the United Kingdom, and co-owners of Dr. Digital iD.
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