Doctors and social media: knowledge gaps and unsafe practices

INTRODUCTION@#Easy access and availability of communication tools have facilitated doctors' communication, adding new challenges. Through this study, we aimed to determine the profile of the knowledge and practices of doctors in our institution, and to identify knowledge gaps in the use of social media accounts.@*METHODS@#An anonymous survey was sent by electronic mail in March-May 2018 to 931 doctors working in National University Hospital, Singapore. It included questions on demographics; use of social media; and case-based scenarios involving professionalism, patient-doctor relationship and personal practices of social media use.@*RESULTS@#The response rate was 12.8%. The majority of the respondents owned a social media account (93.3%), had not received education on social media use in medical school (84.0%), did not own a separate work phone (80.7%) and claimed to have no medical education on this as a doctor (58.8%). Unawareness of the institution's social media policy was reported by 14.3% of the respondents. Questions on knowledge of the privacy settings of their account were incorrectly answered. Only 75.6%-82.4% of the participants responded 'no' when asked if they would post pictures of patients or their results, even if there were no patient identifiers.@*CONCLUSION@#There is inadequate knowledge regarding institutional social media policy and privacy settings of social media accounts among doctors. Regarding practices in social media use, while most agree that caution should be exercised for online posts involving patients, ambiguity still exists. The emerging knowledge deficit and potentially unsafe practices that are identified can be addressed through continuing medical education and training on social media use.

Single Hepatitis B Booster Dose in High-risk Children with Suboptimal Surface Antigen Antibody Responses After 3-dose Primary Vaccine Series

This was a descriptive study of 30 children born to HBsAG positivemothers between June 2009 and December 2013. All childrenhad anti-HBs response ≤100 IU/L after 3 doses of hepatitis Bvaccine primary series. A single booster dose led to hepatitis Bsurface antibody titers ≥100 IU/L in (85%) of children.

Sleep, activity and fatigue reported by Postgraduate Year 1 residents: a prospective cohort study comparing the effects of night float versus the traditional overnight on-call system

INTRODUCTION@#As the traditional overnight call system was shown to contribute to fatigue, Singapore implemented a shift system in 2014. We aimed to compare activity levels, sleep (using a wrist actigraph), fatigue and professional quality of life between residents working on night float and those on overnight calls.@*METHODS@#All Postgraduate Year 1 (PGY1) residents at our institution were invited to participate. Participants were required to wear a wrist actigraph for four months and complete two validated surveys (Epworth Sleepiness Scale [ESS] and Professional Quality of Life [ProQOL] scale) once each at the start and end of the study.@*RESULTS@#49 residents were recruited. Night float and on-call residents showed a comparable median (range) number of steps (10,061 [1,195-15,923] vs. 10,649 [308-21,910]; p = 0.429), amount of sleep logged (361 [149-630] minutes vs. 380 [175-484] minutes; p = 0.369) and time taken to fall asleep (6 [0-14] minutes vs. 6 [range 0-45] minutes; p = 0.726), respectively. Night float residents had less efficient sleep, with 90.5% having sleep efficiency of over 85% compared to 100% of on-call residents (p = 0.127). More night float residents reported ESS scores > 10 (73.1% vs. 38.5%) and higher burnout scores on ProQOL scale (41.4% vs. 21.4%) at the start of the study. However, this was similar to the end of the study and not statistically significant.@*CONCLUSION@#Physical activity and amount of sleep were not significantly different between night float and on-call residents. Residents on night float reported comparatively more fatigue and burnout.