Doctors are facing a unique dilemma about whether to engage with patients via social media networks. It is difficult to determine the ethical boundaries and how much engagement is over-engagement that should be avoided. Existing and potential patients love the idea of getting an opportunity to interact directly with the doctor or dentist. From the doctor’s point of view, it is a highly efficient way to build relationships and improve communication with patients.

However, several challenges remain to be resolved in this scenario that appears to be “win-win” at the surface. Doctors and dentists are concerned and sometimes over-cautious about the laws that govern their professional conduct with patients. Secondly, they worry about the risk of a patient’s privacy getting unintentionally compromised on a social medium. Thirdly, some physicians are concerned about the potential of negative publicity online, which can be much more powerful than any positive support.

However, the growing popularity of social media networking has made it virtually impossible for medical marketing professionals to ignore this avenue for promoting a doctor or a dentist. A balance can be ensured by hiring the services of reputed and experienced medical marketing companies with special expertise in social media networking and managing online reputation of doctors and dentists. Social media experts understand that providing credible medical information to the readers is far more important than overwhelming the network with aggressive sales pitches.

Doctors and dentists who still feel uncomfortable with the idea of informal online engagement between a doctor and a patient need to realize that rapidly changing communication technology is transforming the rules of the game. Patients are a lot more aware than they were in the pre-Internet era. Their aspirations and expectations are much higher, and they would prefer to go with doctors and dentists who are social media friendly. In the light of this changing scenario, every practising doctor and dentist should consider the idea of jumping on to the social network bandwagon seriously.