Professionalism, social media, and the Orthopaedic Surgeon: What do you have on the Internet?

Abstract

Background: Unprofessional conduct is detrimental to the Orthopaedic Surgery profession. Currently, no formal guidelines exist to define online professionalism other than the protection of patient confidentiality.

Objective: This study will extract a random but statistically significant number of practicing Orthopaedic Surgeons and review their online postings.

Methods: We observed the Internet content posted by 1,021 Orthopaedic Surgeons that were randomly selected from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2013 member directory. Each surgeon's name was entered into the Google.com search engine and on Social Media sites including Facebook.com, Twitter.com, LinkedIn.com, and YouTube.com. The content was evaluated and recorded where it was encountered. Unprofessional content was recorded and reviewed by a panel for appropriateness.

Results: Of the 1,021 Orthopaedic Surgeons sampled, 82% have professional websites, 4% have professional blogs, 21% have professional Facebook accounts, 14% have professional Twitter accounts, 26% have professional LinkedIn accounts, and 14% have professional YouTube accounts. Unprofessional content was identified in 3.5% of all surgeons sampled who have some form of content on the Internet.

Conclusion: Every Orthopaedic Surgeon should be aware of the content posted on the Internet. Our recommendation is for surgeons to routinely evaluate content posted on publically available venues for professionalism.

Keywords: Internet; Orthopaedic; professionalism; social media; website.