title: Professionalism, social media, and the Orthopaedic Surgeon: What do you have on the Internet?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Unprofessional conduct is detrimental to the Orthopaedic Surgery profession. Currently, no formal guidelines exist to define online professionalism other than the protection of patient confidentiality.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This study will extract a random but statistically significant number of practicing Orthopaedic Surgeons and review their online postings.
  
  
  METHODS
  We observed the Internet content posted by 1,021 Orthopaedic Surgeons that were randomly selected from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons 2013 member directory. Each surgeon's name was entered into the Google.com search engine and on Social Media sites including Facebook.com, Twitter.com, LinkedIn.com, and YouTube.com. The content was evaluated and recorded where it was encountered. Unprofessional content was recorded and reviewed by a panel for appropriateness.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of the 1,021 Orthopaedic Surgeons sampled, 82% have professional websites, 4% have professional blogs, 21% have professional Facebook accounts, 14% have professional Twitter accounts, 26% have professional LinkedIn accounts, and 14% have professional YouTube accounts. Unprofessional content was identified in 3.5% of all surgeons sampled who have some form of content on the Internet.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Every Orthopaedic Surgeon should be aware of the content posted on the Internet. Our recommendation is for surgeons to routinely evaluate content posted on publically available venues for professionalism.
authors.affiliation: Valley Hospital Medical Center, Las Vegas, NV 89106, USA.
authors.forename: Trevor
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Call
authors.affiliation: Nevada Orthopedic & Spine Center, Las Vegas, NV 89128, USA.
authors.forename: Ronald
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Hillock
mesh_terms: D057218:Blogging / Q000941:ethics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D000072161:Orthopedic Surgeons / Q000941:ethics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000068616:Professionalism / Q000941:ethics; D061108:Social Media / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States
keywords: Internet; Orthopaedic; professionalism; social media; website