(Press-News.org) CLEVELAND - Tweet it. Snap it. Pin it. Post it...or however else you want to share it with the masses scouring the Internet searching for common ground connectivity. But, should doctors peer behind the privacy curtain of potential patients to help avert or discover more severe problems?
University Hospitals Case Medical Center Psychiatrist Stephanie Pope, MD, examined the impact of social media on mental health care and treatment. She specifically investigated how the public forums could help diagnoses in clinical practice as well as serving as behavioral predictors. Her analysis also delves into the ethical aspects of patient/doctor relationships utilizing social media outlets which are becoming more and more prevalent in adolescent populations.
Her findings were enlightening. Aside from the societal increase and prevalence of social media, Dr. Pope discovered that doctors and patients sometimes blur lines of their relationships. Instances where social media research of patients in treatment helped to prevent injury were recorded, while definitive, institutional policy and procedures were sorely lagging causing potential issues in patient care.
Dr. Pope will present the study, "Social Media and Psychiatry" at the American Psychiatric Association Meeting in May in Toronto. She surveyed psychiatrists and psychologists to better understand social media significance, impact as well as particular guidelines and ethics associated with patient/doctor relationships.
She also examined the trios of ethical, professional and legal considerations on social platforms as it pertains to their collective work and personal lives meshing together sometimes creating ambiguous and complex interactions between health professionals and patients.
"This study was conducted as an effort to demonstrate the clinical implications of social media and form an understanding of the legal and ethical consequences of social media within practice," said Pope. "Institutions across the country lack protocols relating to the media forms and professional guidelines need to be established."
The numbers associated with social media usage are staggering. In 2013, Facebook alone had 751 million users while Twitter continued to surge with 555 million accounts that averaged 58 million tweets every day. The amount of personal information such as photos, hometown information and cell phone numbers are easily accessible online. Additionally, new mediums continued to surface as well where people share information such as Snapchat and Instagram.
The statistics and data don't necessarily get risky until they enter into the personal health realm where 60 percent of patients are seeking support, knowledge and information about their own health utilizing social media platforms.
The medical community has followed suit with the trending numbers of social media users.
According to a study in 2008, 64 percent of medical students and 13 percent of residents were active on Facebook and of that percentage only 37 percent of those active kept their profiles private, away from potential patients. Most recently, the data showed a substantial spike in active profiles held by doctors and medical students with almost 90 percent maintaining some sort of social media accounts.
Dr. Pope's research noted that doctors and patients can effectively use the social forums to help their conditions, find support and while selecting the best options for care. Additionally, doctors can use social media for a number of positive aspects, but that clear, definable protocols should be set in place.
Dr. Pope's also focused her research and analyzed social media's impact on her area of expertise and found alarming statistics relating to suicidal ideations, behaviors and specific illnesses. Most importantly, the validation of social media aiding in treatment and being clinically relevant became obvious.
"We need to understand the magnitude that social media is having on our clinical practice but at the same time we need to develop patient/doctor boundaries," said Dr. Pope. "When a patient comes to the emergency room and has had thoughts about suicide, social media channels can help ...but how, when and if can use this information is at the core of the argument."
INFORMATION:
About University Hospitals
University Hospitals, the second largest employer in Northeast Ohio with 25,000 employees, serves the needs of patients through an integrated network of 15 hospitals, 29 outpatient health centers and primary care physician offices in 15 counties. At the core of our $3.5 billion health system is University Hospitals Case Medical Center, ranked among America's 50 best hospitals by U.S. News & World Report in all 12 methodology-ranked specialties. The primary affiliate of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, UH Case Medical Center is home to some of the most prestigious clinical and research centers of excellence in the nation, including cancer, pediatrics, women's health, orthopaedics, radiology, neuroscience, cardiology and cardiovascular surgery, digestive health, transplantation and genetics. Its main campus includes UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, ranked among the top children's hospitals in the nation; UH MacDonald Women's Hospital, Ohio's only hospital for women; and UH Seidman Cancer Center, part of the NCI-designated Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University. For more information, go to http://www.uhhospitals.org
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences used information collected from hundreds of skin swabs to produce three-dimensional maps of molecular and microbial variations across the body. These maps provide a baseline for future studies of the interplay between the molecules that make up our skin, the microbes that live on us, our personal hygiene routines and other environmental factors. The study, published March 30 by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may help further our understanding of ...
GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- Got milk? If you are overweight and have osteoarthritis, you may want to bone up on your dairy products that have vitamin D. According to a University of Florida study, higher levels of vitamin D may decrease pain and improve function in obese individuals with osteoarthritis.
Findings published in the January issue of The Clinical Journal of Pain indicate that obese individuals who suffer from osteoarthritis and have adequate vitamin D levels could walk, balance and rise from sitting to standing better than obese participants with insufficient vitamin ...
Humans have been inspired by nature since the beginning of time. We mimic nature to develop new technologies, with examples ranging from machinery to pharmaceuticals to new materials. Planes are modelled on birds and many drugs have their origins in plants. Researchers at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering have taken it a step further: in order to develop an extremely sensitive temperature sensor they took a close look at temperature-sensitive plants. However, they did not mimic the properties of the plants; instead, they developed a hybrid material that ...
Scientists have found a way to measure the unseen toll that environmental stress places on living creatures -- showing that they can rev up their metabolism to work more than twice as hard as normal to cope with change.
Stresses from climate change such as rising temperatures and increasing ocean acidity can edge an organism closer and closer to the brink of death without visible signs. In fact, the researchers -- led by USC's Donal Manahan -- were surprised at just how good organisms can be at hiding the stress they're under.
Manahan and his colleagues found that increasing ...
A study of peanut consumption showed that including them as a part of a high fat meal improved the post-meal triglyceride response and preserved endothelial function.
"Peanuts are a healthy snack when eaten as part of a healthy diet," said lead researcher Xiaoran Liu, a graduate student in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at The Pennsylvania State University.
The purpose of this research was to evaluate vascular function after a high fat meal challenge. Overweight males (n = 15) were randomized to either a peanut meal containing 3 oz. of ground peanuts (as ...
CORVALLIS, Ore. - A new analysis reported in JAMA Psychiatry raises serious questions about the increasingly common use of second-generation antidepressant drugs to treat anxiety disorders.
It concludes that studies supporting the value of these medications for that purpose have been distorted by publication bias, outcome reporting bias and "spin." Even though they may still play a role in treating these disorders, the effectiveness of the drugs has been overestimated.
In some cases the medications, which are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the world, are ...
MADISON - Research has discovered a role for prolactin, the hormone that stimulates milk production in nursing mothers, in the bond between parents.
The study relied on hormone analyses of urine from cotton-top tamarins, a small, endangered monkey native to Colombia. They live in monogamous family groups where both parents help care for the young, which is similar to humans.
The study found a link between prolactin levels and sexual activity and cuddling among paired adults. Although this was a first for prolactin, it has previously been found for oxytocin, a hormone ...
The decades worth of data that has been collected about the billions of neurons in the brain is astounding. To help scientists make sense of this "brain big data," researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have used data mining to create http://www.neuroelectro.org, a publicly available website that acts like Wikipedia, indexing physiological information about neurons.
The site will help to accelerate the advance of neuroscience research by providing a centralized resource for collecting and comparing data on neuronal function. A description of the data available and ...
MADISON - Even during a good year, soybean farmers nationwide are, in essence, taking a loss. That's because changes in weather patterns have been eating into their profits and taking quite a bite: $11 billion over the past 20 years.
This massive loss has been hidden, in effect, by the impressive annual growth seen in soybean yields thanks to other factors. But that growth could have been 30 percent higher if weather variations resulting from climate change had not occurred, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison agronomists published last month in Nature ...
BOSTON -A study led by Boston Medical Center (BMC) researchers demonstrates that while new therapies to treat Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) are highly effective, they are cost-effective and provide the greatest value in specific groups of HCV-infected patients. The findings of the study, led by Benjamin P. Linas, MD, MPH, from BMC's section of infectious diseases and the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), are published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The study focused on the combination of sofosbuvir and ribavirin for treatment of HCV genotypes 2 and 3, which ...
