Physicians on Facebook

Physicians writing on KevinMD about Facebook and social media: practice pages and patient communities, privacy and professionalism, a doctor's identity stolen for a scam, health misinformation, and the toll of the feed on physicians and their children. Most of the archive dates from 2007 to 2019.

Ebola forces us to rethink how we document in the EMR

John Halamka, MD

Health Technology

October 26, 2014

Over the past several years I’ve written about the inadequate state of clinical documentation, which is largely unchanged since the days of Osler, (except for a bit more structure introduced by Larry Weed in the 1970s) and was created for billing/legal purposes not for care coordination.

One of the most frequent complaints in my email box these days is a sense that the current record is filled with data, but little knowledge and …

5 things EMRs should learn from social media

Val Jones, MD

Health Technology

September 16, 2014

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As a physician who openly despises many aspects of current EMRs (see “How An EMR Gave My Patient Syphilis” or “The Medical Chart: Ground Zero For The Deterioration Of Patient Care” ) I recognize that they are here to stay. And so, since we’re all stuck with these digital middlemen, I have some suggestions (based on popular social media platform functionality) …

More medical academic literature is needed on social media

Brian Levine, MD

Social Media in Medicine

June 5, 2014

A PubMed query of the phrase “social media” yields 8,747 unique peer-reviewed articles. When the search is refined to “social media medical education” there are 578 articles. When “professionalism” is also added to the search string, there are only 31 article results. This suggests that very few authors are writing about the topic: Approximately 0.4% of the available peer-reviewed literature about social media pertains to how we doctors should use and …

Analyzing the Katie Couric effect on the vaccine conversation

Natasha Burgert, MD

Social Media in Medicine

February 18, 2014

On December 4th, 2013, Katie Couric gave the HPV vaccine center stage during a segment on her talk show, Katie. The segment, entitled “The HPV Controversy,” was 20 minutes long, but ignited a digital firestorm between pro- and anti-vaccine voices that raged for days after the stage lights went dark.

In partnership with Global Prairie, the entire online conversation surrounding this Katie segment was digitally captured using …

The OR is not a good place for a prank

Skeptical Scalpel, MD

Social Media in Medicine

October 2, 2013

An anesthesiologist at a California hospital pasted stickers simulating a mustache and teardrops on the face of a hospital employee while she was having surgery on a finger.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the doctor said, “I thought she would think this is funny and she would appreciate it.”

And if that wasn’t bad enough, a “nursing attendant” took a photograph.

The patient, who said she had to quit her job …

Read more…

The OR is not a good place for a prank

Should doctors separate their personal and professional identities?

Kevin Pho, MD

KevinMD

August 17, 2013

Most social media guidelines for physicians, most recently from the American College of Physicians and Federation of State Medical Boards, suggest that doctors separate their personal and professional identity.

Until physicians are better educated on how best to act professionally on social networks, keeping their online personal lives private is more likely to keep them out of trouble.

But is it time for that recommendation to be revised?

In a recent JAMA perspective …