Ethics on social media: Navigating medicine’s digital frontier
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17795709Keywords:
Bioethics, Social media, Digital professionalism, Medical ethics, Physician-patient relationsAbstract
The rise of social media has irreversibly transformed medicine, making digital professionalism (e-professionalism) a fundamental ethical competence. This review explores complex challenges physicians face online. A major risk is breach of patient privacy—not only through direct disclosure but also indirectly via “contextual data” in images or descriptions, aggravated by limited digital literacy. Another challenge is blurred therapeutic boundaries and dual relationships when accepting patients as personal contacts, which may bias clinical judgment and cause discomfort. Nonprofessional content (intoxication, discriminatory language or derogatory complaints) on personal accounts may leak, undermining public trust in the physician and the profession. In public health, professionals have an ethical duty to actively counter the infodemic (misinformation), a phenomenon with lethal consequences amplified by algorithms, yet they must do so with empathy and evidence, avoiding ideological activism. Instant messaging for clinical communication poses serious legal and ethical risks due to security problems, fragmented documentation and erosion of personal boundaries (burnout). Conflicts of interest of the “physician influencer” who promotes products or manipulates expectations are also noted. The conclusion emphasizes the urgent need to integrate e-professionalism training into the medical curriculum to build a resilient digital professional identity.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Andrea Paola Britos Gómez, Alcides Chaux (Autor/a)
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