The connected generation regularly uses social media, including health care professionals, but what happens when a patient wants to friend you? Or you’ve already posted a rant on a patient that gets viewed by others? What information may already be floating on the internet that a patient may find about you in a google search and that might impact your therapeutic relationship?

This book summarizes the most common mistakes made in social media by busy healthcare professionals, and the legal, and ethical ramifications to same. It gives guidance as to best practices for using social media while maintaining online professionalism. It identifies categories of caution, from confidentiality of the patient information, maintaining the professional’s privacy, to general netiquette in tweeting, texting, blogging, and friending-as well as setting up one’s faculty page (or not), and managing one’s online footprint.

Whether you are new to social media, or an expert user in your private life but haven’t thought about what this means for you professionally…this book is for you. It’s the when and how to use social media effectively while maintaining online professionalism.