Sick Social Networkers Raise Ethical Questions For Docs

Doctors are definitely familiar with disturbing public stalkers, the annoying breed who feel the need to disrupt parties and private moments with disgusting queries of "Does this look infected?" A new type of hypochondriac has become so concerning, though, that officials in England have been forced to issue a public warning to people in the medical profession.

The U.K.'s Medical Defense Union recently cautioned medical workers about people who inappropriately contact and proposition doctors through social networking sites like Facebook. Doctors not only face ethical threats from such infatuated social networking sickos, but networking sites could also lead to the leakage of confidential patient information. Despite at least seven years of higher education, apparently some docs haven't yet figured out how to adjust their privacy settings.

So, doctors face a moral and ethical dilemma, as some say it would be inappropriate to not respond to patients. But engaging in those discussions, which is definitely more effective than directing someone to a diagnosis Web site, could also lead to breaches of doctor-patient confidentiality. It seems then that doctors have a significant amount of research on Web behavior to conduct, just like every other modern occupation. Welcome to the Internets, doc. [From: The BBC]

Tags: confidentiality agreement, ConfidentialityAgreement, doctor patient relationships, DoctorPatientRelationships, facebook, facebook stalkers, FacebookStalkers, top