| Abstract [eng] |
Aim of the study: to examine habits of social network use, attitudes towards ethics of social media use to communicate with patients and correlation of these aspects among 1st – 6th year medical students at Vilnius University and consider recommendations to solve ethical problems related to this topic if needed. Methods: data for this study was collected by conducting an anonymous online survey via Google Forms, which was shared on Facebook pages of medical students studying at Vilnius university. 286 medical students answered. Survey included questions about demografics of the respondens, habits of social media use, attitudes towards using social media to communicate with patients in the future, attitudess towards ethical aspects of using social media for named purpose and potential patient confidentiality breaches among medical students on social media. Results: Most often used social media platform among Vilnius university medical students is Instagram (46,5%), 2-4 hours per day are spent on social media on average. 77,3% of respondents do not check privacy settings when creating a new social network account, 64,3% do not regulate time spent on social media. 40,2% of medical students would be willing to use social media to communicate with patients in the future, 8,7% would send a „friend“ request or follow a patient on social media, 30,1% would accept a „friend request“ or follow from a patient. Most suitable social network to communicate with patients according to medical students is Facebook and Facebook Messenger. 3,5% of survey subjects have breached patient confidentiality on social media, 19,2% have seen other medical student from Vilnius university breach patient confidentiaity. Among respondents, tendency to not check privacy settings, tendency to use social media to communicate with patients in the future and tendency to accept „friend“ requests from patients correlates with less strict ethical attitudes towards digital communication. Conclusions: taking into account the tendency of medical students to use social networks to communicate with patients in the future and correlations found in this study as well as incidence of confidentiality breaches, medical students at Vilnius University are at risk to harm the reputation of their proffesion, but further research is needed to better understand it. |
