It may be helpful to sort policy goals for students into three categories:
1- How to protect patients.
2- How to protect institutions.
3- How to protect students themselves.
This post addresses protecting institutions. I offer some typical institution-relevant guidelines, and then give my two cents. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
Good guidelines for protecting institutions that I've come across:
Be factually correct- don't overstate your knowledge.
Be transparent- disclose your connection to and your role with the institution your institution.
Control your institution email address- only use you .edu address for official business.
Control your privacy settings.
Weak guidelines:
Adhere to the institution pledge/code- pledges and codes offer few specifics.
Obtain permission- what warrants permission? Every single tweet? Blog posts that mention the institution?
My Two Cents:
One of the
first things newly minted medical students do is sew their school’s
seal on their white coat, offering a continual reminder that they represent
their medical institution whenever they wear this coat. However, they do not
have any badge to remind them of this when they are online.
Medical school has
particular demands and stresses beyond those of many other educational
settings. In my experience, stress and unhappiness were commonly transferred to
professors, courses, and the institution as a whole, often with discomfiting
vehemence. It was not uncommon to see these expressions find their way to
facebook.
More than
simply protecting themselves, medical schools owe it to their students to
prepare them to represent the institutions to which they will belong in the
future. As future doctors, medical students will find themselves building and
maintaining professional relationships for decades, each with different
cultures and expectations of openness, sharing, and representation. The earlier
these skills are developed, the better off students will be.
Many of the
obligations and features of operating in the social media space derive from issues
of professionalism. Social media training is an opportunity to teach
professionalism, not only in content but also in practice. In my experience,
features of professionalism have been taught didactically, and participation
has consisted only of personal reflection. Social media training, specifically
regarding representing an institution, offers a means to actively engage
students with these crucial issues.
How do we
protect institutions from students’ damaging comments, made deliberately or
spur-of-the-moment? Again, the middle way between abstinence and indifference
lies in student training about creating content that appropriately represents
those to whom institutional membership impinges upon. A first step is to
characterize for students the nature and extent of their obligations to the
institution. The specific stakeholders who depend on the institution’s “good
name” should be detailed, along with their depth of connection. A potential
method is to start with the individual student and work outward. When you speak
about your school, you are indirectly speaking for yourself, your classmates,
all students, and all alumni who have dedicated years of study and will have/do
have certification/validation of their life’s calling in the form of diplomas.
You speak for the faculty and staff who have staked their livelihood on service
to the institution. You speak for the administration who have staked their
professional reputations. You speak for the clinicians you aspire to be. You
speak for the patients who have chosen to be treated here. You speak for the
community members who respect your institution as an integral community
fixture.
