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Saturday, April 14, 2012

Medical Boards Discipline Physicians for Online Behavior

By Jenni Laidman
Medscape Medical News
Originally published March 20, 2012

Most medical licensing boards have received at least 1 complaint about unprofessional online behavior by physicians, and many of these complaints resulted in serious disciplinary actions, including license revocation, according to a research letter published in the March 21 issue of JAMA.

S. Ryan Greysen, MD, from the Division of Hospital Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues report that 48 (71%) of the 68 executive directors of medical licensing boards responded to the study survey. Of those, 44 (92%; 95% confidence interval [CI], 86% - 98%) indicated receiving at least 1 complaint about an online professional breach.

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"We've just found a new way to violate our own standards," Jason Jent, PhD, assistant professor of clinical pediatrics, Division of Clinical Psychology, Department of Pediatrics, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Florida, said to Medscape Medical News.

The entire story is here.