12 Nov AMA Releases Social Media Guidelines for Physicians

HealthLeadersMedia.com | November 11 – The American Medical Association this week adopted a social media use policy to help physicians protect patient privacy, and physicians’ personal and professional reputations.

“Using social media can help physicians create a professional presence online, express their personal views and foster relationships, but it can also create new challenges for the patient-physician relationship,” says AMA Board Member Mary Anne McCaffree, MD. “The AMA’s new policy outlines a number of considerations physicians should weigh when building or maintaining a presence online.”

The new policy encourages physicians to:

• Use privacy settings to safeguard personal information on social networking sites.
• Monitor their own Internet presence to ensure that the personal and professional information on their own sites and content posted about them by others, is accurate and appropriate.
• Maintain appropriate boundaries of the patient-physician relationship when interacting with patients online and ensure patient privacy and confidentiality is maintained.
• Consider separating personal and professional content online.
• Recognize that actions online and content posted can negatively affect their reputations among patients and colleagues, and may even have consequences for their medical careers.

The policy on professionalism when using social media was adopted this week at AMA’s semi-annual policy making meeting in San Diego.

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