The Responsible Use of Online Social Networking: Who Should Mentor Medical Students

Background: As medical students become more active in online social networking (OSN), there are increasing concerns regarding violations of patient privacy and a lack of professionalism. Purpose: Students need to be mentored, but who is best suited to the task? We hypothesized that residents are clo...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Teaching and learning in medicine 2012-10, Vol.24 (4), p.348-354
Main Authors: Patel, Pradip D., Roberts, John L., Miller, Karen Hughes, Ziegler, Craig, Ostapchuk, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Data Collection
Faculty, Medical - statistics & numerical data
Female
Humans
Internet
Internship and Residency - statistics & numerical data
Interpersonal Relations
Learning
Male
Mentors
Middle Aged
Professional Role
Social Networking
Social Responsibility
Statistics, Nonparametric
Students, Medical - psychology
Students, Medical - statistics & numerical data
United States
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Background: As medical students become more active in online social networking (OSN), there are increasing concerns regarding violations of patient privacy and a lack of professionalism. Purpose: Students need to be mentored, but who is best suited to the task? We hypothesized that residents are closer to students in usage and attitudes toward online communication than are faculty. If so, they would be more credible as mentors. Methods: We surveyed faculty (N = 16), 1st-year residents (N = 120), and 3rd-year medical students (N = 130) to compare attitudes about OSN and the online usage patterns. Results: We found residents to be more like students in usage patterns of personal electronic media and in their choice of the mentoring techniques that should be used. Conclusion: Residents say they were not prepared to mentor students without additional guidance but were more confident than faculty members that they had the knowledge to do so.
ISSN:1040-1334
1532-8015
DOI:10.1080/10401334.2012.715260