Recently, a graduate student in Nuclear Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee sued the school because it disciplined her for “crude and sexual” posts on Twitter. The school’s Professional Conduct Committee found that some photos and her suggestions for alternate lyrics for a Cardi B/Megan Thee Stallion song reflected poorly on the school. The Committee learned about the posts from anonymous tips; the student did not use her real name, and did not mention the school, in her account.
The situation recalls a similar one from a couple of years ago, when a medical journal called The Journal of Vascular Surgery published a study in which some experienced vascular surgeons (those who perform surgery on blood vessels) offered advice for young doctors in their field about how to behave professionally on social media. Three of the researchers (all male) created fake profiles on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and followed over 200 vascular surgeons and medical students. They found that a few of them had posted “clearly unprofessional content,” which they defined as HIPPA (patient privacy) violations, “intoxicated appearance, unlawful behavior, possession of drugs or drug paraphernalia, and uncensored profanity or offensive comments about colleagues/work/patients.”
But many more of them posted what the researchers called “ potentially unprofessional content,” which included “holding/consuming alcohol, inappropriate attire, censored profanity, controversial political or religious comments, and controversial social topics.”
The researchers’ intention was to provide advice to young doctors. They pointed out that “unprofessional” social media content could bother patients and potential patients, and could also harm the medical professional as a whole.
The reaction to the article was swift and negative. Many people in the medical field objected to the researchers’ assumption that those behaviors would alienate patients, though the researchers never asked any patients for their reactions. (What counted as “unprofessional” was essentially just the opinion of the researchers.) Others objected to the ethical problem of creating fake accounts to gather information about other medical professionals, without identifying themselves as researchers or informing the people they were studying.
The biggest objection came from the assumption that medical doctors posting pictures of themselves in bathing suits (an example of “inappropriate attire”) made them unprofessional. A number of doctors and medical students posted on Twitter with the hashtag #MedBikini, pointing out that criticism about “inappropriate attire” was directed far more often at women than at men. Comments pointed out that, for example, a pic from a vacation to celebrate four years of hard work in medical school said nothing about how “professional” a doctor might be. Many posted pictures of themselves in bathing suits, listing their credentials as well, to make the point that they can be professional and have fun ( or be “joyful”) at the same time.
The editors of the journal noted the criticism and took down the article, and one of its authors apologized. [While the original medical journal article is no longer available online, I saved a copy. If anyone would like to see it, I’m happy to send you a pdf.]
This situation is a little different than Justine Sacco’s (or some other others you’ll read about this week), in that the researchers weren’t saying “inappropriate attire” and other behaviors should get a doctor fired. Rather, they were concerned about the perception of patients. Few of us are employers, but most (if not all) of us have been medical patients at some point.
Look again at the “potentially unprofessional content” list from the article: “holding/consuming alcohol, inappropriate attire, censored profanity, controversial political or religious comments, and controversial social topics.” If you were to follow a doctor on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram, would seeing any of these behaviors cause you to not see that doctor anymore? Would the platform matter (are some behaviors better tolerated on, say, Instagram or Twitter rather than Facebook)? Or, in the case of the graduate student in pharmacy, would you stop using her pharmacy to fill prescriiptions? Taking a larger view, would you ever follow or look up a doctor’s social media profile in the first place? One of the researchers, in apologizing for the study, noted that “standards of professionalism are changing” – what some patients consider unprofessional is not the same as it was just a few years ago. Do you think that’s true? With more people living more of their lives online, are we so used to seeing certain behaviors (whether acted out by doctors or anyone else) that they are just “normal” to us now? How you ever been in a situation where you saw something that someone posted online, and it changed your opinion of them as a professional (a teacher, for example)?
Consider some or all of these questions as you write about what counts as “unprofessional behavior,” as you, a person rather than an employer, consider how someone’s online presence affects how you perceive them.
READ THIS INFORMATION TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.
