Social media and the medical profession

Social media is now increasingly being used by various professionals to enhance the professional outcome and solve the day to day problems and enrich their knowledge but the medical fraternity is lagging behind in this race. Medical professionals are using social media for private use but for professional use, trend is of hesitant use. There are two groups on the social media, one is of consumers and other is of providers and medical professionals best fit in the second category due to their knowledge, experience, and expertise but newly registered doctors fall into the first category. Limited use of social media is due to ignorance and fear of legal problems. Objective and purpose of this paper are to make medical professionals aware about the potentials, advantages, disadvantages, ethical issues, limitations, challenges and precautions about using the social media so that medical professionals can use the social media in a better and safe way.