Should everyone Friend?
“As your doctor, I might sit on the edge of your hospital bed and try to quell your fears and anxieties of being ill. Or, I might bounce into the examination room with a bright smile and try to make you laugh with one of my very funny (read: corny) jokes. We might sit together and catch up on your life over the past six months since we last saw each other. In fact, we might have a patient-physician relationship that makes other patients and physicians utterly jealous.
But, please, don't ask me to be your friend. That is, your Facebook friend.” (http://www/)
Should everyone accept all the invitations on Face Book? Most of the population accepts friends on Face Book to keep in touch, gossip, and communicate. Should you friend your own personal Physician? After all this is the person that knows you in a medical sense but nothing else. Should your Physician accept?
In all cases I believe it to be no. Keeping the Doctor patient relationship is the utmost importance to any healthcare professional. To have your personal physician as a friend on a social networking is not a healthy idea for the person/patient. There has to be a demarcation between the two of patient and physician. The case of a person being a social friend to your personal physician is not always the wisest choice. Again the demarcation factor and how wise is it to know your Physician can see or read everything you put out on the social network? It is like an open invitation to be viewed and reviewed.
Some of the post that I am able to see on Face Book are not proper or could be construed as being severely depressed or other disorders that a physician due his oath would have to take action. Most of the posts I see that could be mistaken are just whining notes but why put yourself out there for inspection from your physician on a daily basis. And is he or she really your friend? Would they have the same circle of friends and the same interests?
Face Book’s value is social networking and unless you are in the same social network as your physician it is never a good idea. There is no policy with the AMA as of yet but it is come to the front of the to do list.
(http://www) the Physician makes a good point, “For many of us physicians on Face Book, the thought of opening up our personal pages filled with family photos, off the cuff remarks and potentially relationship status and political and or religious views to our patients gives us the heebie-jeebies……..” The physician may share a potential view that his patients may take an issue to.
It is better left that Physicians do not friend patients. There are none of my Physicians I not want to have friend me on Face Book. It would not leave it as a social network but babysitters with your Physician looking on to make sure you are ok.
References
http://www. Usatoday (Vol. com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-10-column10_ST1_N.htm?POE=click-refer). Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-06-10-column10_ST1_N.htm?POE=click-refer
http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Culture/Computers+and+Internet/Facebook
4 comments:
I agree there should be a strict doctor / patient friendship. I also feel that you should not ask a friend who became a physician to be your physician. There are things that doctors know about me that I may not want everyone else to know and there are things that I may know about my doctor that he may not want told to everyone else. I think the Dr. / patient relationship is like the business / friend relationship.
I know from having a family member who is a dcotor that it is best to keep a strick doctor/patient relationship. If not than there could be costly problems. One problem is doctors do not like to treat serously illments with somone the have a deep friendship with.
I agree that doctors should not include patients as their friends on social networks. I would think there would be a lot of opportunities for the doctor to accidentally violate HIPAA privacy laws, accidentally opening themselves up to lawsuits. I wonder if people friend their lawyers or teachers on Faceboook? It seems like there could be a lot of ethical issues to consider.
This is a great tidbit to chew on. I agree with Yvonne wholeheartedly and I think that Aron Walter makes a great point regarding privacy laws. I know that as a student at the collegiate level I was unable to "friend" a professor until after I left the institution. Once that happened there was less of a reason to do so. It is interesting however to see how people are starting to associate everything with Facebook, including the person that makes our sniffles go away.
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