Many American medical schools are reporting problems with unprofessional social media posts by their students, including posts that have violated patient confidentiality.

In a survey published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 60 per cent of responding medical schools reported at least one case of inappropriate tweets, Facebook posts or Flickr photos posted by their students.

Medical schools in the U.S. are reporting that some medical students are getting into trouble over their posts on social media sites like Twitter. (CBC) Dr. Katherine Chretien of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and her colleagues examined reports of medical students getting into trouble with unprofessional social media posts and sent out anonymous surveys to 130 medical schools in the U.S. Of those, 78 responded.

Incidents that violated patient confidentiality weren't very common, with only six of the 78 schools reporting any cases in the last year.

"Student use of profanity, frankly discriminatory language, depiction of intoxication, and sexually suggestive material were more commonly reported," the authors wrote. "Issues of conflict of interest were rare."

Among schools that reported a problem with students' unprofessional posts, 78 per cent said there were between one and five incidents in the last year. Seven per cent had between five and 15 incidents.

About 67 per cent of the schools that reported such incidents gave students informal warnings and seven per cent reported expelling students.

The researchers behind the survey suggested that social media literacy should be made part of medical education.

"The formal professionalism curriculum should include a digital media component, which could include instruction on managing the 'digital footprint,' such as electing privacy settings on social networking sites and performing periodic web searches of oneself," the authors wrote.

Managing your online reputation

"Googling yourself" should be the first step in managing your reputation online, says Sidney Eve Matrix, a media professor at Queen's University and blogger on digital culture.

"Your next step is going to be Facebook. Make sure your privacy settings are set accordingly and that you are receiving notifications," she said. Setting your notifications properly will ensure that you know right away when someone has tagged you in a photo, a necessity in the current "point-and-shoot-and-post culture," Matrix said.

"Social photography sharing is part of what it means to be a young person today, so in order to get ahead of those potentially devastating pictures, you need to untag yourself."

If removing the tag isn't enough to salvage your reputation after someone posts an embarrassing picture of you, "your first step is to swallow your pride, contact them and ask them to remove it," Matrix said.

Matrix urges students to create their own online presence, with a website, electronic portfolio and profiles on professional networking sites such as LinkedIn.

"Very few students will go to LinkedIn and do a profile there because it's a professional site," she said. "It's not really there for leisure and fun."