Social Media Fair Play

JustADoc commented about a Yahoo News story concerning an obstetrician who posted a mini-rant on Facebook about one of her patients always being late. The obstetrician’s post said “I have a patient who has chosen to either no-show or be late (sometimes hours) for all of her prenatal visits, ultrasounds, and NSTs. She is now 3 hours late for her induction. May I show up late to her delivery?” After the post became widely distributed, some people called for the doctor to be fired. Others defended her as a good physician. The hospital assured all their concerned patients that the hospital would “reinforce their high employee standards.” The Yahoo news story created a fake retort from the obstetrician’s hospital (I looked up the hospital’s Facebook page to make sure it was a fake retort) saying When I look back at my post last week about State Medical Board investigations for what are deemed to be inappropriate online posts, I started thinking. If people agree that doctors’ livelihoods and the money and time they spent on their medical educations should be threatened because of a potentially offensive statement, shouldn’t that be the standard for everyone else as well? An offensive statement is made by a hospital, investigate the administrative staff. Maybe fire them and blackball them from further jobs in hospital administration. Politicians make an offensive statement, investigate them, too. Maybe they get fired and prevent...
Source: WhiteCoat's Call Room - Category: Emergency Medicine Doctors Authors: Tags: Policy Source Type: blogs