If doctors glean information about their clients via the internet, that could well be ''ethically problematic'', but some related insights could better protect the patient, a Dunedin doctor says.
Susan Walthert, of the Dunedin School of Medicine medical education unit, said little was known about the prevalence of New Zealand medical professionals using internet search engines or social media sites to gather information on their patients.
This was called patient-targeted googling.
''The internet presents a raft of ethical issues by blurring some boundaries of professionalism and introduces new modes of intimacy in the doctor-patient relationship,'' she said.
''There are very few times when it's the right thing to do, and very many times when it's the wrong thing,'' she said in an interview.
If a patient was unconscious in an emergency department, and critical information was not available from the patient, or other sources, or a patient had advanced dementia, googling could have positive benefits.
Guidelines were needed around searching for patient information on the internet.
In the first study of its kind in New Zealand, initiated by Otago Medical School student Aaron Chester, Otago researchers conducted a survey of 54 final year students from the school.
The researchers sought to better understand the extent of such googling and the related ethical and clinical issues.
Just published in BMC Medical Ethics, the results showed that patient-targeted googling was uncommon - just 16.7% having done it- but most participants wanted clearer guidance on the issue.
There were many guidelines about using social media for medical students, but the researchers could not find any guideline that specifically addressed such googling.
Dr Walthert emphasised that doctors should always ''check their reasons'' for googling a patient, and this practice posed a ''huge risk to the doctor-patient trust''.
If patients felt their privacy and autonomy had been breached, this could spark distrust towards the doctor.
It would generally be better for the doctor to suggest to the patient that there could be benefits in looking at the patient's Facebook page, and to offer to look at it together, rather than ''willy-nilly'' googling.
As a result of the study, the Otago Medical School now included the issue of patient-targeted googling in the early learning in medicine curriculum.
