Article Review: Professionalism of physicians on Twitter

Three physicians independently coded the 20 most recent tweets from each account (total n= 5,156) for unprofessional content. There were 144 (3%) unprofessional tweets from 27 users

• 55 (1%) - possible conflict of interest, advocating for non-standard therapies
• 38 (0.7%) - potentially violation of patient privacy
• 33 (0.6%) - profanity
• 14 (0.3%) - sexually explicit material
• 4 (0.1%) - discriminatory statement
• 25 of 27 (92%) of users were identifiable 

The authors conclude that, although rare, there should be more physician accountability and guidelines in the age of social media. This is even more true, since I just discovered that all tweets are archived by the Library of Congress!

Take a look at your most recent tweets. How would they have performed if you were included in this study?

Reference
Chretien KC, Azar J, Kind T. Physicians on Twitter. JAMA: The journal of the American Medical Association. 2011. 305(6), 566-8. PMID: 21304081