UMEM Educational Pearls

Title: Leave no trace - The Dangers of online diaries

Category: Med-Legal

Keywords: legal, malpractice, discovery, privacy, online (PubMed Search)

Posted: 9/12/2009 by Dan Lemkin, MS, MD (Updated: 9/19/2009)
Click here to contact Dan Lemkin, MS, MD

Beware of your online contributions, they can come back to hurt you in legal settings. You must remember that there is a digital trail of everything you post online. Discovery rules vary state to state. It is best to practice save surfing. What you may perceive as paranoia is really just good practice.

The following guidelines apply to:

Email
Online chats: google chat, IRC, AOL AIM, MSN
Social networks: Facebook, Mypage, Medical networking pages, etc
Any online medium, forum, discussion site

General guidelines

Do not reference any patient cases with dates (regardless of hipaa identifiers)
Do not provide any medical advice for specific cases online
- Add a disclaimer for general advice (see the disclaimers for these pearls as example)
Do not discuss any potential or ongoing legal cases with peers PERIOD, especially electronic methods with a record.
Do not document ethically questionable behavior online
- ie: "that time in vegas when you got sooooo drunk"

Assume that whenever you hit send, your message will be available to a plaintiff attorney who will twist it to suit his/her needs. The only potential exception is direct email communication to your personal legal counsel. Please verify that local laws protect this form of communication before making an assumption of privacy.

[This pearl is a review of published general recommendations on privacy practices and should not be interpreted as, or replace competent legal advice.]

References

Brenner, Ilene MD. Anything you tweet can, and will, be used against you. Emergency Physician's Monthly. September 2009. Vol 16-9.