The Face(book) Behind the Mask!

In this rather poignant article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the author discusses his doubts and vacillations when a patient from 3 years ago befriends him on the popular social networking site, Facebook. At once he is interested to know how her baby girl (whom he delivered) is doing, and is cowed by the fact that he will be breaching the wall that separates his public life from the private one. He is worried that the patient will have access to his blogs, his photographs, his wall posts, everything, and feels insecure.

In today’s world, with the social media slowly but surely taking control of the world wide web, its very difficult to avoid not getting entangled in it. After reading some of the examples the author cites here, it becomes really difficult to ignore the reality that these profiles are glass windows through which the whole world can view, and worse, judge us (based on the poor sample they provide!):

Take, for example, the MICU nurse who blogs about her experiences in dealing with a difficult patient, forgetting that one of the patient’s family members — a recent addition to her network of friends — has access to her blog. Or the dermatology resident who is asked on a date by a clinic patient after he learns from her online profile that she is single — information that he would have hesitated to draw out of her in person. Or the medical attending whose clinical judgment is questioned because of photographs posted online, showing him in progressive stages of apparent inebriation at a department holiday party.

So, what is the way out? Constant Vigilance, as Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, the mad auror from Harry Potter books would have told, is probably the only way out. Several institutions have started keeping an eye out on their applicants’ profiles using their online presence. Even patients have started Googling their doctors for further research on them! And with these hard times, where patients are counselled to sue doctors literally at the fall of a hat, this takes on an entirely different perspective! I imagine Facebook/ MySpace profiles would not make very compelling evidence in the court of law, but in the hearts of people, in the media, in the jurors’ eyes, they could make all the difference!

This article is a potent reminder of the fact that it is high time that we started realizing that professionalism is never to be discarded. And at times, a masked face(book) is often prettier (and professionally safer) than the real one!

 

 

Jain, S. (2009). Practicing Medicine in the Age of Facebook New England Journal of Medicine, 361 (7), 649-651 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp0901277