I WILL TEACH THEM MY ART: SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE FUTURE OF MEDICAL EDUCATION
Michael Burk, MD
I
first heard about the incident after the first disciplinary hearing. A fellow medical student had posted what he believed to have been a de-identified anecdote about a patient he had seen on social media. A nurse from the hospital had been able to figure out who the patient was from the anecdote and had reported him to the medical school administration. He was by all accounts a bright, conscientious and caring person. He worked hard, would volunteer to stay late, knew his patients well and appeared that he would be able to match his first choice in an extremely competitive field. I speak in the past tense because this was considered to be a career ending mistake.
We are crossing the chasm of a great generational divide in medicine. As social media has invaded the medical world over the last two decades, our profession has struggled to cope with the ramifications of the collision of social and professional mores. Barely a month passes between hearing of a life ruined, a professional reputation tarnished, or a patient’ s family wounded by a lapse in judgment on social media. Since the first Facebook status was posted and the first Tweet was typed, the medical community has viewed social media as something to be feared as the source of innumerable HIPAA violations and malpractice suits. The medical field has been wise to acknowledge the power of social media; yet, in our fear, we have done little to harness that power for the good of the profession. The newest groups of physicians have been born and raised to use, grow and maintain an online presence through social networking. With the influx of technologically-savvy young physicians, this is a medium which we must embrace as a tool of empowerment rather than cowering from its potential consequences.
I have seen firsthand our professional world collide headlong with that of technology. Early in my medical school career at a satellite campus of a medical school, many of our lectures were given by Ph. D. professors in the appropriate fields of basic sciences, per tradition. These professors wrote the midterm test, but never the final exam. After much of our class nearly failed our first final because of this discrepancy, we found a way to get the recorded lectures from the main campus, which were much better suited to the comprehensive