Social media use habits, and attitudes toward e-professionalism among medicine and dental medicine students: A quantitative cross-sectional study

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Abstract

Aim To describe and compare social media (SM) use habits, and attitudes of medical and dental students toward e-professionalism and to determine their opinion on potentially unprofessional behavior and posts. Methods In this quantitative cross-sectional questionnaire study, students of the University of Zagreb School of Medicine and those of the School of Dental Medicine completed a survey-specific questionnaire on the use of SM, SM habits, and attitudes toward e-professionalism. Results Of the 714 collected questionnaires, we analyzed 698 (411 from medical and 287 from dental students). The most commonly used SM were Facebook (99%) and Instagram (80.7%). Unprofessional content was recognized by both groups. Medical students significantly more frequently considered the posts containing patient photos (61% vs 89.8%; P< 0.001), describing interaction with a patient not revealing any personal identifiable information (23% vs 41.8%; P< 0.001), and containing critical comments about faculty (53% vs 39.7%; P= 0.001) to be unprofessional. Dental medicine students were significantly more open to communication through SM (39.7% vs 16.3%; P< 0.001), more often reported that they would accept (41.5% vs 12.2%; P< 0.001), and had accepted (28.2% vs 5.6%; P< 0.001) friend requests/follows/tracks from patients, and sent friend requests/follows/tracks to their patients (5.2% vs 1.2%; P= 0.002). Conclusion Both groups were highly aware of e-professionalism. Dental students were more desensitized to visual representations of patients, and more prone to SM interactions with patients, which might expose them to the risk of unprofessional behavior.

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Viskić, J., Jokić, D., Marelić, M., Poplašen, L. M., Relić, D., Sedak, K., & Rukavina, T. V. (2021). Social media use habits, and attitudes toward e-professionalism among medicine and dental medicine students: A quantitative cross-sectional study. Croatian Medical Journal, 62(6), 569–579. https://doi.org/10.3325/CMJ.2021.62.569

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