AAN 2015

1. Social Media Etiquette and Guidelines for
Healthcare Providers: Identifying Strategies
to Protect You and Your Patients
@MakalaJohnson – Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media

2. Agenda
• Challenges
• Guidelines
• Risk Reversal

3. Challenges

4. Challenges
• Speed
• Easy to send disastrous posts from the wrong
account

5. Challenges
• Speed
• Not the same level of vetting of time and placement
• Can lead to insensitive posts

6. Challenges
• Reach
• Social media provides access to more people.
• A misstep could be seen by many.

7. Challenges
• Generation of “lifecasters”
• Expectation of sharing details of life as they happen
• Not the same expectation of privacy

8. Challenges
• Generation of “lifecasters”
• “Share immediately” mindset often includes what
happens at work, leading to privacy concerns.

9. Challenges
• Blurring of professional/personal lives
• Most social media sites encourage sharing info
about professional lives.

10. Challenges
• Privacy is not the only concern.
• Professionalism and ethics

11. Challenges
• Higher standard of professionalism and ethics in
health care

12. Guidelines

13. Guidelines
• AMA Opinion 9.124 - Professionalism in the Use of
Social Media
• Safeguard privacy
• Be accurate
• Maintain appropriate professional boundaries as
per ethics guidelines
• Responsibility to report unprofessional conduct to
individual and/or authorities

14. Guidelines
• First Stop: Privacy Checkup!

15. Guidelines
• Employee Education:
• Videos:
• http://youtu.be/pjocDhlicJs
• http://youtu.be/tZYtZN24x_Q
• Guidelines:
• mayocl.in/SMguidelines

16. Guidelines
• Follow all applicable Mayo Clinic policies.
• Be respectful and professional to fellow employees
and patients.
• Don’t say anything online you wouldn’t say in person.

17. Guidelines
• Write in first person. Be transparent.

18. Guidelines
• Do not “friend” patients on social media sites.

19. Risk Reversal

20. Involuntary Myspace Presence

21. Social media is inevitable. If you don’t
create your online presence, someone
else will or maybe already has.

22. If there are risks whether or not you
are involved in social media, why
not also get some of the benefits
from these powerful tools?

23. Case Study:
Jayson Werth, UT Ligament Split Tear, & Dr. Berger

25. 3031031-9

26. Less than 24 hours after my initial appointment, I not
only had a new diagnosis - a UT split tear - but had
surgery to correct the problem. As I write this, my
right arm is in a festive green, but otherwise annoying
cast. The short-term hassle, however, should be more
than worth the long-term gain - the potential for a
future without chronic wrist pain. A future, that
without Twitter and those in the medical community
willing to experiment with new communications tools,
might not exist for me.
Less than 24 hours after my initial appointment, I not
only had a new diagnosis - a UT split tear - but had
surgery to correct the problem. As I write this, my
right arm is in a festive green, but otherwise annoying
cast. The short-term hassle, however, should be more
than worth the long-term gain - the potential for a
future without chronic wrist pain. A future, that
without Twitter and those in the medical community
willing to experiment with new communications tools,
might not exist for me.

28. What’s the big deal?
• 87% of U.S. adults use the Internet (Pew
Research, 2014).
• 72% of Internet users say they looked online
for health information within the past year.
(Pew Research, 2012)
• 90% of adults age 18-24 trust medical
information shared by others in their social
media networks (PwC Health Research,
2012).

29. Applying social media in health care
isn’t just inevitable; it’s the right thing
to do in the interest of patients.

30. socialmediacenter@mayo.edu
Twitter: @MakalaJohnson
Questions?
@MakalaJohnson