Members of the medical profession are no exception in the use of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, various dating sites, and other sites. They too fall prey to its allure and pitfalls. Surveys have shown that more than 90 percent of physicians are using it for personal reasons and a lesser percentage for business purposes. This personal use has not been without consequence. More than 90 percent of State Medical Boards have received complaints of inappropriate online behavior by physicians while using social media, and there have been episodes of disciplinary action.
Like society in general, the medical profession is in a state of rapid change due to digitization and associated technologies. No longer is it the major source of medical information for the public since that role has been co-opted by the Internet. A few years from now the entire paradigm of the practice of medicine will change from hospital-centric sick-care that began in the nineteenth century to patient-centric personalized preventive-care built around continuous real-time monitoring and treatment algorithms, and it will take place mostly in the home, workplace, and ambulatory care centers, not in pricey and dangerous hospitals. In response to this tectonic shift due partially to the pressure of runaway costs of healthcare, medical education will have to be dramatically altered to remain relevant, especially since it is one of the most conservative professional pedagogies. The current expensive, long drawn-out, overly competitive path of four years of college, four years of medical school, and up to seven years of hospital-based residency, all of which was instituted in 1910 and hasn’t changed much since, will have to be drastically updated. The novel Charlatans presages the need for such a change. And on a lighter note, the novel also begs the question: Did your doctor truly get the training he or she so ostentatiously advertises with all those easily reproduced diplomas hanging on the office wall?