The PiTT-CMU MSTP NewSleTTer - University of Pittsburgh :: MSTP

Spotlight on Current Ethical Dilemmas:
What Role, If Any, Does Social Networking
plAy in Modern Medicine
Technological advancements are happening at an amazing
speed in our generation, enabling social networking sites to
become increasingly accessible. Have you seen the Best Buy
commercial with Ozzy Osbourne and Justin Bieber boasting
about mobile internet speed upgrades Are you waiting with
baited breath for the iPad 2 Were you behaving like a kid in
a candy store when the iPhone 4 became available on the Verizon
network I have to confess that I personally think “two
networks are better than one.”
At the end of last year, 31 percent of Americans owned
smart phones and over four billion iPads were sold (Google.
com). Whether it be via a smartphone, tablet, or notebook
computer, the average medical student has internet access 24
hours a day, seven days a week. You can video chat, tweet,
update Facebook statuses, share pictures, and blog to your
hearts content. What is more, network providers like T-Mobile ©
and AT&T TM often advertise access to social networking sites
as a feature of their devices. Awesome… right
Example from one of
my Facebook friends:
…. This lady came to
ER because she saw
raccoons in her garbage
this morning and
she feels “a little off”
so she would like to be
checked for rabies
-PHYSICIAN at Wesley
Medical Center, CONN
9 a.m. EST on Jan. 23
via iPhone
Neither of the posts contain common patient identifiers
(see below), but the postings themselves leave date,
time, and location information. Moreover, the comments
that follow such posts can be explicit and mean.
Maybe not.
In spite of the fact that
Facebook and MySpace
activity can be used as evidence
in a court of law, no
one has stopped to ask if
such accessibility to social
networking is even necessary.
Even though it gives
me great delight to share
that Charlie Sheen just set
the “fastest time to reach 1 million followers” Guinness World
Record this week (CNN Tech) after a string of purely comical
tweets, many postings on Facebook are not laughing matters.
Dr. Richard Steinman brought up the following submission
from NY Times The Ethicist column:
Some of my Facebook friends are medical students
who post cellphone pictures of patients with what these friends
believe to be comical maladies, with captions like “A 5-foot-9
Hispanic male walks into a bar . . .” under a picture of a patient
with a piece of rebar piercing his abdomen. The postings don’t
include faces or names but still seem questionable. Doesn’t
this violate patient privacy
-NAME WITHHELD, NEW YORK
Medical students getting into trouble on Facebook is
not earth-shattering news. What is alarming is the frequency
at which incidents like the one described above are occurring.
In truth, it is not a rarity for medical students to post pictures of
themselves in the hospital with patients or to describe patients
encountered on any given day.
As a friendly reminder, the HIPAA Privacy Rule protects
all individually identifiable health information held or
transmitted by a covered entity or its business associate,
in any form or media, whether electronic, paper, or oral.
Identifiable health information
includes demographic
data and relates to:
•the individual’s past,
present, or future physical
or mental health or condition
•the provision of health
care to the individual
•the past, present, or future
payment for the provision
of health care to the
individual, and that identifies
the individual or for which there is a reasonable basis
to believe can be used to identify the individual.
policy.
See www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/ for the complete
Common patient identifiers include but are not limited
to name, address, birth date, or Social Security Number.
Questions to think about: Would it be reasonable to believe
information accessible to 1,000 Facebook friends can be
used to identify an individual And is it okay to share patient
information as long as the patients are not identifiable With
more than 500 million active Facebook users, half of which
log on every single day, it might be wise to post with caution.
- Natasha Corbitt, G2
5