Ethical issues in the use of online social media forums by GPs

What is it about?

General practice consultations frequently present ethical challenges.1 However, short appointments and full clinics leave little opportunity for ethical discussion and reflection. Relative professional isolation, time pressures, and the lack of formal structures for ethics advice found in secondary care also make support difficult for GPs to access.2 Consequently, GPs may rely on informal online sources for advice on ethical dilemmas. GP groups on social media forums (SMFs), originally established to provide a platform for GPs to discuss clinical queries and for professional networking, increasingly include discussion of ethical problems.3,4 The General Medical Council (GMC)5 and Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP)6 have published specific guidance regarding the use of social media by doctors, including the importance of considering potential ethical challenges such as confidentiality, and professionalism. However, although these provide extensive advice regarding online discussions between doctors and their patients, they fail to provide guidance relating to the use of professional groups on SMFs, and therefore do not focus on potential issues that might arise for doctors using these. Here we review how GPs currently use SMFs for discussion of such issues and suggest that it could be useful for GPs and other ‘office-based’ primary care clinicians to reflect on two questions: what might GPs discuss in online forums, and are there any ethical issues connected to the use of SMFs themselves?

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