The aim of this study is to gain insights into the current attitudes and practices of medical students in relation to digital professionalism during their development as students.<\/p>\n
Doctors are required by their governing body, the General Medical Council (GMC), and expected by society and patients, to act in a professional manner. They must \u201cmake sure that [their] conduct at all times justifies [their] patients\u2019 trust in [them] and the public\u2019s trust in the profession. This obligation also applies to medical students and development of professionalism is essential in medical curricula. Core principles outline in the GMC\u2019s Good Medical Practice include respecting patient confidentiality, avoiding expression of \u201cpersonal beliefs, including political, religious or moral beliefs\u201d to patients \u201cin ways that exploit their vulnerability or that are likely to cause them distress\u201d and challenging colleagues if they behave unprofessionally.<\/p>\n
The rise in popularity of social media and Web 2.0 tools (which allow creation of online content), such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Youtube \u00a0and Flikr, has blurred the boundaries between the personal and professional lives of medical practitioners and students, with serious implications for professionalism online \u2013 digital professionalism.<\/p>\n
Shore et al1<\/sup> identified four areas of ethical concern relating to the use of social media by health professionals: \u201cboundary issues in the patient-physician relationship, privacy and confidentiality, implications of the nature and scope of information available online, and physicians\u2019 self-presentation online\u201d and these are echoed by many others.<\/p>\n This project investigates these concerns.<\/p>\n Currently we have completed analysing the results of our pilot study and are beginning dissemination.<\/p>\n The project contributes to the department\u2019s strategy, based as it is in empirically-based applied research to the solution of real world problems and our commitment to work with a wide range of users, including health professionals.<\/p>\n The Digital Professionalism in Medical Education project (pilot) is part-funded by the Bowland Trust. <\/p>\n 1<\/sup>\u00a0Shore R, Halsey J, Shah K, Crigger B-J, Douglas S. Report of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affaris: Professionalism in the Use of Social Media. The Journal of Clinical Ethics. 2011;22(2):165-72.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"sidebar-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/digital-professionalism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}