There is an interesting article at news.ufl.edu about the web usage of medical students. This generation of medstudents is already on the web (Facebook, blogs, community sites, Twitter, etc.). If they think their web life doesn’t represent their real identity, they are absolutely wrong. An excerpt from a recent study:

Thompson and several researchers from the UF’s colleges of Education and Medicine did a review of the Facebook sites of 362 UF medical students and residents and found that a significant portion of them were publicizing personal information most physicians would never share with their patients.

The researchers randomly selected 10 Facebook profiles for a more in-depth analysis, looking for hard-to-quantify items that patients or colleagues might find objectionable. Seven of the 10 included photographs in which the subject was drinking alcohol, and some form of excessive or hazardous drinking was implied in as many as half of those photos.

Image source

My dear fellow medical student friends! If you accept my pieces of advice:

• Create a profile and publish your CV on LinkedIn.
• Join properly managed medical communities, such as Biowizard or Tiromed.
• Have an appropriate e-mail address (johnloveboy77@… is not a good example).
• You should control what kind of content is being published about you on the web.
• Present yourself through a blog.
• Respect the privacy of patients.

Don’t forget, patients and your future employers will find what you publish about you and your life on the web. So use it wisely…