It is good to see that social media and eHealth are becoming mainstream topics at national health conferences. At the recent GP Education & Training Conference in Perth (GPET13) I attended two workshops about our professional online presence.

The first one was about the benefits of social media and was attended by GP supervisors, registrars and students. The second one, sponsored by a medical defence organisation, warned about the dangers of the online world, and interestingly there were mainly GP supervisors in the room.

Before I continue I must declare that I was one of the presenters at the first workshop. But it was good to be reminded by professor Stephen Trumble about what can go wrong. His excellent presentation created a lively discussion. Here are seven random points I took home from the workshop:

Tip #1

Doctors should be careful when looking up patients online, eg via Google…