Ethical Use of Social Media and Sharing of Patient Information by Medical Students at a University Hospital in Saudi Arabia: Cross-Sectional Survey.

Abstract

Background: Social media (SM) has become an integral part of many medical students' lives, blurring the lines between their personal and professional identities as many aspects of their medical careers appear online. Physicians must understand how to responsibly navigate these sites.

Objective: This study aimed to identify how medical students use SM and their awareness and adherence to ethical guidelines of e-professionalism.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study delivered as an online voluntary survey to senior medical students at King AbdulAziz University Hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We investigated how many students used SM, their privacy settings, their possible breaches of ethical standards, and their portrayal of their training institute online.

Results: A total of 400/1546 (26%) senior medical students responded to our survey. Among the participants, 95/400 (24%) had public SM accounts, while 162/400 (41%) had both private and public accounts. As for breaches in e-professionalism, 11/400 (3%) participants posted a picture of a patient on SM without their permission, while 75/400 (20%) posted part of an excised organ or x-ray on SM without their permission, and 60/400 (16%) discussed a patient. With regards to sharing medical school information, 108/400 (29%) discussed an incident at their medical school, and 119/400 (31%) participants shared a lecture online without the presenter's permission. Approximately 66% of the participants reported that they were unaware if their institution had a professional code of conduct for SM use, and 259/371 (70%) did not receive training on the professional use of SM.

Conclusions: Medical students must be taught to recognize inappropriate online behavior, understand their role as representatives of their medical school, and know the potential repercussions of unprofessional conduct on SM. This could be accomplished by providing workshops, regular seminars on e-professionalism, and including principles of SM conduct in existing ethics courses.